Daily Twaddle

I love Indiana Jones. I love the ride at Disneyland - even Roch was Indiana Jones for Halloween once. I was thrilled when I found out they’ve made another movie!

Let’s start off by saying this story was written by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielburg. Now, can you really go wrong? Also, Shia LaBeouf (one of my favorite actors) stars in the movie with Cate Blanchett and Harrison Ford.

Okay, now lots of my friends watched this movie and were disappointed by the weak plot and lame special effects. I asked “Did you watch the first three movies of the series?” No, of course they didn’t. They didn’t enjoy the movie because they’re missing the nostalgia that I grew up with.

I thought it was a good movie. I liked that they brought back old characters. I also thought it was great to see what Indy has been up to since his last adventure (professing of course). Plus they kind of made way for a new generation of Indiana Jones - Jr.

In theaters now!
Watch the movie trailer »

I give it a “quite enjoyable.”
4 out of 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

My niece brought this movie over to my house when I babysat. Although I busied myself with cleaning or something, I popped my head in the living room a few times to watch part of the movie. I didn’t get to finish the movie, or even understand the plot, but I liked the scenes I watched.

I’m in charge of the Netflix account (Roch tasked me), so I choose the movies and TV shows. What can I say? I rent the crap out of movies since I canceled my cable/satellite service. I thought we’d give this movie a try. We usually wind down at night with an hour of TV-time or book-time before bed. With movies, we just pick a good spot to stop watching and finish it the next day.

We loved this movie! We found it difficult to decide when to stop watching - we kept saying “after this scene” or “let’s see what happens here.”

The movie has a great plot with a good ending. My kind of show. I just wish I had watched it in the theater! Rent this movie if you get a chance.

I give it a “surprisingly awesome.”
5 out of 5 Stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Everyone is getting the Spring-cleaning bug and getting rid of all their old crap. Lucky for them, I like old crap.

My sister-in-law and I hit the streets with a list of garage sale addresses from the local newspaper. We have a general idea of the house location, but we still depend on the seller’s signage to guide us. This works great for unadvertised sales - but the ones who advertise in the paper don’t seem to think they need to put up signs.

So, the next time we went out, I typed in all the street address ahead of time. The GPS unit routed a map for me, but gave me the scenic route or avoided highways or something - the route was inefficient. We ended up just picking from the list of addresses before we drove to the next sale.

It was so awesome! It told us exactly where to go, how many more miles to go, and which side of the street the sale would be. We use it every time now.

I wish the weather would let up a little bit so that I won’t get snowed on whilst garage sale-ing. Isn’t it April?

BTW: This post is related to this post.

Currently I have the Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, and Playstation 2. I hoped that Nintendo would create another all-in-one game cartridge with the series of Super Mario Bros (1,2, and 3). They did that with the Super Nintendo (which I used to own, but I don’t know where it went). But, much to my dismay… no sign of my Mario Brothers for the 64.

I decided to go into the market for the original Nintendo (NES) so that I could finally play my beloved game. And duck hunt - boy, I loved that game too (I don’t shoot the dog when I play duck hunt, in case you were wondering).

Here’s where eBay came in. I ended up winning a package with the console, 20 games, the gun, and two controllers for $69 (including shipping). A pretty good deal I thought. Then… I realized my mom’s birthday is coming up. I bet she would love the original Atari!

Houston… we have a problem. The more I looked at the old Atari games, the more I realized that I wanted the Atari for myself! I decided to call my mom to see if she really wanted an Atari. She did. Bummer, because now it won’t be a surprise. But, we decided it would be best to ship the system to my house so that I can test the games to make sure everything is working correctly. Great plan.

But back to my eBay experience. Here are my complaints and kudos for the exciting act of online auctioneering.

1. Shipping Costs. They charge too much! Shipping usually runs just under $30! Whoa! I barely want to spend that much on the item itself! So… I only bid on items with low shipping costs.
2. Buy it Now. LOVE IT! Before bidding begins, sellers often offer a “buy it now” link with the price they’re willing to take for the item. So, rather than wait four days for the auction to end, you can make your purchase right away. Of course if you bid on the item instead, you might get it cheaper… or you might pay more if the competition is stiff.
3. Paypal. Although Paypal isn’t exclusively used for eBay - I think it’s an awesome feature. Easy, safe, secure.
4. My Maximum Bid. This is fantastic. I choose an amount I’m willing to pay… let’s say $30. eBay will then bid on my behalf up to my max amount. So if the current bid is $10, eBay will bid $11 for me. If someone comes in with $15, eBay will bid $16 and so on until $30. Very cool. I usually get my item for half of what I’m willing to pay. Or I get outbid altogether (which is fine because I didn’t want to pay more than $30!)

While I find eBay exciting, I get stressed out waiting for the bid results. I generally don’t bid on an item unless it ends within a day or so. Auctions ending within a few hours are best because I check my status every five minutes.

I’m actually writing this post while waiting for the auction to end for my mom’s Atari system. Frogger included of course. I have three minutes left and I’m the high bidder ($5 under the amount I’m willing to pay). Cutting it close, but I think I’ll be okay.

Click the refresh button… here we go… did I win? Oh crap… seven seconds left. Jeeze. Refresh. Come on, come on! Yes! I won! Hurray! Now on to paying with Paypal. I like to get feedback with the phrase “rapid payment.”

As a Web Designer, one of the biggest problems I run into is gathering content (text & pictures) from clients. Business owners may not have any idea of what they want their website to do (they just know they need one because everyone else has one). Or maybe they’re just too busy and can’t find the time to add yet another task to their to-do-list.

Many times I write the content myself. I’ve asked a couple of clients to let me record our meetings. You’d be surprised how much great content they have in their heads when you ask “what’s so great about your product?” So, you can imagine how thrilled I am when a client actually sends me some “meat” to add to their site.

I just received a large brochure from a client. I assumed it was a brochure because the file name said “brochure.” But the extension was .pub. What the heck is a dot pub? I did a quick Google search and found out that a .pub is a Microsoft Publisher file. Great, I don’t have that program on my computer.

What are my options? Well, I can buy this stupid program that I’ll never use. But that’s dumb. Or, I can tell the client that I can’t use this file and he needs to send it in some other form. But that’s totally embarrassing. And I’m thrilled to get content in any form, I just wish I could figure out how to convert the dang file.

I found a website called PDF Converter. You can upload your random, weirdo document and they will convert it to a PDF, then email it to you (you’ll have to unzip it though). They can convert 117 different kinds of documents into a PDF. It’s also a free service. Okay, what’s the catch? Do they add viruses to the file? Will I get all kinds of spam after I submit my email address? Will they steal the content from the file I upload?

Skeptical, I read the privacy policy which stated they will not do any of that bad stuff to me. As far as their profits, they offer a membership service that is similar to shareware donations. They also get some of their money from their Google ads. I read more and found that this program is just one of many from the main software company (Baltsoft).

Okay, after deciding the website was legit, I decided to use the service and upload my .pub file. There was an option to attach the file to the email, which I chose to do. It took about three minutes to arrive in my inbox. I scanned the attachment for viruses (you can never be too careful) and unzipped the file. I couldn’t believe it! It worked like a charm!

Did I mention that you upload your file online and they do the work for you? Which means, you don’t need to install any software on your computer! Genius! If you need to do some crazy-converting, go to freepdfconvert.com. Tell them Large Marj sent you. (pee-wee herman anyone?)

I’ve been using WordPress since February and I’ve tried many plugins. So, here is my list of the plugins I use, what they do, and my star rating. If a plugin has a four-star rating, I’d be willing to pay for the plugin. A one-star rating means I could probably go without the plugin.

Note: This review has nothing to do with the quality of the plugin or it’s ability to do what it says it does. The stars just rate how much I personally like the plugin.

BTW: I used an HTML table for this list because I like tables. They’re great when I have information that displays best in a table.

I just ate the new snickers candy bar. This candy is promo for the new Shrek movie: Shrek the third. I already ate it and I forgot to take a picture of it. I found a snickers candy review that you might like to read.

The wrapper says “with green Shrek filling.” That made me laugh. Filled with Shrek’s green what exactly? It tastes the same as the regular snickers. They just dyed the nuget bright green. Really bright.

While I was searching for the “official site” so I could use their picture and give a little credit to a fun candy bar, I kept stumbling across articles about Shrek’s obesity-promotion. Or articles on the gay-hating “snickers kiss” commercial. Corporations have an agenda and hidden innuendos, so they claim.

Anyway, I found a little fun in the form of Shrek trivia on M&M’s website. I’m pretty good, but some of the questions are hard! You have to move your mouse around the forest then click (when you can) and collect M&Ms. For each M&M you find, you get to answer a trivia question.

I like games.

Of course, I’m incredibly happy with my Mac, but I like to play around with new stuff. My sister-in-law just bought a computer with Windows Vista and I helped her set up her email accounts.

Vista has a lot of “stuff”. I was overwhelmed at first. Outlook had extra toolbars, sidebars, pop-up notices - you name it. Turning off all the extra crap took me about ten minutes. Some applications ran slow, but I’m pretty sure this computer has a celeron processor or something similar.

Pretty? Yes… very