( That's my voldemort voice by the way )

Well I just did it, I order my copy of the new Harry Potter book. Amazon seems to have the best deal with delivery on the release date even. While you pay some tax, they also give you a $5 gift certificate for use in Aug, so comes out to $17. Even without it it's about the same as B&N with tax on the release date.

I think I will buzz through it the following week, I don't want any chance of it being ruined, especially after 6 books and many years of build up. Avoiding the store will help by preventing exposure to spoiling events that happened during the last release.

I also found this little tidbit on amazon during ordering. The clustering is a little interesting, Most of the top cities are in the Pennsylvania, Virginia, NY triangle. I'm curious how this plays out politically.

Oh, and July is the best month ever

July 3 - Transformers
July 4 - Holiday!
July 13th - Harry Potter the Movie
July 19th - My Birthday
July 21st - Harry Potter the final Book!

good night

I have a 30GB iPod but iTunes does not seem to agree.

When my iPod is connected to iTunes it says 2.2GB are free but hell if I can't add anything else to it. Trying to add anything more than a few minutes long just has iTunes yelling at me the iPod is full. It's so very annoying, if my iPod is only 28G big, at least tell me up front.

Not much has happened recently, but I finished a tad bit of web development not too long ago. Anatrove got a small bit of AJAX added to it after I saw my first and only introduction to AJAX. It is a nice addition in my eyes, being able to skim through the album randomly; a little dynamic aspect which had some interesting code issues related to it. Sadly the actual Client/Server aspect was horribly easy using Prototype. In fact, I spent much more time getting the visual aspects surrounding the dynamic changing elements to be just right than actually doing the changing. Ah well, it keeps my web development muscle exercised.

The other this is my main site shanem.net, it was pretty horrible and now it is much better. I had grand ideas, that were little more than that back in the day, and my site was just trash for the most park. So, that is all gone and now there's much more structure. I had a little trouble with the 'splash' page, but it's to my liking. Photographing paper is not easy I have found out.

Science doesn't have a good PR department, but there are a few things working for it. One I partake of regularly is a podcast called Radio Lab. It's an hourly show put out by WNYC. Sadly it has very short season. Season Three just started and there are only 10 episodes before it.

Radio Lab describes their show as "science bumps into culture," I would add that it's like a This American Life for science stuff. I highly recommend each of you, yes you!, give it a try. The only warning I will give is that earlier episodes can be a bit over stylistic to some; it grew on me, but some don't like it at all.

One of the things I learned on the last episode that kinda wowed me was that Placebos can have a Placebo effect. The color of your placebo changes it's effect. For sleeping pills, blue is a better placebo than orange, except for Italian men. The reason given? The Italian mens soccer team is named Azzurri which most likely subconsciously conjures excitement in Italian men.

Ok, I'll give you another. Your situation affects how you feel pain or not. Soldiers in war will feel lees pain from a gun shot than a civilian. It's theorized this is because the soldier subconsciously builds a story that they'll live, have a comfy stay at a hospital, get to go home, get a medal, a pension, and maybe even a parade. Where you and me, when we get shot there's no good story in our future.

( Also on LJ, with a few not here probably )

I was originally going to post about my cat eating stuff and something else, but the something else will have to wait. Let's get onto Abby and eating stuff.

I really don't know which to start with, both are pretty traumatizing, but let's start with the cute one. So my wii was just ... no no, it's cute, but bunnies are cuter, even sad ones :/

So, last night I'm in the kitchen cleaning up, and I hear Abby's collar jingling around signaling that she has come back in from playing outside. She jingles a bit more and I come out of the kitchen, go to look for her and I find a bunny instead. Sad part is, this is not a happy bunny, this is a young, not moving, bunny; a sad bunny. I'm just kinda freaked out that there is a bunny ( dead ) in my apartment and that Abby was part of this. I hadn't given the little guy up at that point, and make a soft poky device from a paper towel and investigate. poke. poke. hmmm

It was very sad, apparently that cat can hunt. The odd thing about it was he was still kind of cute, even in death.

Rachel and I took the kit over to a near by park, and as the sun set buried him.

Good bye little bunny.

That was yesterday, and it would seem that in a fit of rage over not getting her bunny meal, Abby viciously attacked my wii. Rachel and I were all ready to set out with Link to save Princess Zelda when the Wiimote was not showing up on the screen. It was connected, but no icon. We checked the other mote, same thing then investigated the Wii itself.

See, an hour or so before the power blinked out followed by a night lightening strike and a resounding thunder boom. I usually likes these two, but now it was suspected of damaging my wii friend. I figured the sensor bar got fried or something, but discovered a different culprit; several bite marks along the very long wire to connecting sensor bar to wii. My cat chewed through the cable.

This has happened before, I should not have been surprised, but here I was; surprised. My shiny new wii was now a cripple. I tried to mend his little cable much like I successfully did with my mouse, but no go. The wii cable is even much simpler, but not easier to fix.

There is a bit of a good ending to this part though, unlike the first. The brilliant engineers at Nintendo designed the sensor bar so that you can replace it with fairly simple things, like candles. Two small candles on top of the tv and the Wii is back in action.

Kudos Nintendo. Now, can anyone spare a sensor bar?

Some links for any that haven't started a retirement fund.

First, with all the various options of where to put retirement money a quick cheatsheet, with some further explanation. For the highlights, these are the options in order.

        * Employer plan with a match
        * Roth IRA
        * Employer plan without a match
        * Traditional IRA
        * Taxable investment
        * Annuity

And Secondly, a quick guide to setting up an IRA.

( From LJ on 4/7/07 )

Snowy Path

I had thought that my recent uploading and usage of winter pictures was a bit untimely until I heard on the radio that there's a chance of snow tonight. They gave 20% and Weatherbug says 30% so not too shabby.
 
If this were some sign that the summers in Texas would be more temprate It'd be more excited, however the theory of Global Warming says it'll just be even worse. I guess a couple months more of cooler weather might be worth a somehow even hotter though shorter summer.

( From LJ on 4/4/07 )

Bird in Hand

Three weeks ago today I came home to find this little guy fluttering around my apartment. The scene I saw was of the bird making a racket at the top of some blinds and Abby the cat on the floor trying to behave normally. Two thoughts entered my mind at the same time. Where is the blood, and why is the bird still alive?
 
It would seem Abby is better at planning attacks on helpless birds than actually executing them. I can only imagine that the bird stayed high enough for Abby's efforts to be simply in vain.
 
He ... she? He was pretty easy to catch with a kitchen towel and remained still for me to take a picture. Well, still until I tried to take him out on the porch with the cat on it.

( From LJ on 4/2/07 )

Snow Abby

Abby managed to take a long jump off my balcony last night for the second time in as many years. It's an odd feeling when you realize your cat is not where she should be; the place gets eerily empty all of a sudden.
 
Thankfully, she showed up at the front door at the same time Rachel did to come help me look around the neighborhood for her.

My previous JE about my suspect Native American ancestry came to mind today and I decided to do a quick google search.

"dna racial heritage test"

The first result was dead on giving me The Genetic Testing Laboratories, Inc's Earth Origins DNA Ancestory test.

I'm kind of suspect about such things as found over the internet. I guess I feel that anything medical related should be done via a doctor, as well the idea of sending a swab of my DNA off to some random company with a website is somewhat suspicious. But the price is much better than I expected. For this particular place it's $274, about the same price as a Wii including tax.

As it is I'm still waiting until I can just walk into Target and pick up a wii. I've looked on ebay but am unwilling to pay more than what I'd pay in a store, so "good deals" often disappear in the last minute of an auction. This is all a sign of how little video games really excite me anymore. I want one, but I can certainly wait a while. So, maybe that money could be put too more interesting use, like a genetic breakdown.

Currently, it is just a thought, but it would be kinda useful. It would cover me and my brothers in one go, as well my sister-in-law could use it to help direct filling in the geneology tree. Probably not hard to find the right Irish male McDaniel down my dad's side, but the native american supposedly was on the female side, so could help there, as well my mom's side is fairly unknown.

It could be interesting, though maybe I should go the whole nine yards and get the full medical breakdown. Though I have already decided I only want to know about the correctable, or genetically passable things that otherwise I can do something about. I started reading Genome a while ago, and boy did that make me scared of DNA profiling.