I pay most of my bills online. Today, I was unable to pay three of them – this has never happened before. One site locked me out after an incorrect password entry, another’s database was down, and a third was in restricted status because I haven’t made a payment in three months – oops.

This bothers me terribly, because now these institutions expect me to call them. And speak with them. On the phone.

I hate calling places, which is why I pay all my bills online (except three that don’t accept online payments, and for those I usually drop checks off in drop boxes after the businesses are closed). I’d rather pull my nails out with pliers while holding my hands submerged in a vat of boiling Mercurochrome than call a company and discuss, with some unholy bitch, why I haven’t paid them in three months or why I typed my password in wrong or why their web site won’t take my damn money.

Voice communication with vendors is so last century.

It seems you’ve learned not to use MSN to surf for porn; I hardly get any funny porn search strings any more. In fact, most of my search hits are for the same things. I have to say again, however, that the number of persons searching for “how to build a nuke” is somewhat disturbing.

71.2% of you use Windows XP. I don’t like Windows XP. Not that it’s ever done anything to me personally, I just don’t like it. I’m still thinking of switching to OSX.

If you love Google, which of course you do, and need help figuring out how to waste more time playing with it, here’s your holy grail: Googlewhacking: The Search for The One True Googlewhack.

Today, The Onion killed me. Dead. Behold, the funniest fucking headline of ALL TIME:

Enchanted By Own Innocence, Michael Jackson Molests Self

I’ll be playing this Friday night at Revelations with Jonas Magram and the Seventh Ray. This will be a reprise of our last gig, in the sense that we’ll be doing the same album.

This will be Jonas’ last performance in Fairfield. He’s moving to Aspen, Colorado.

Other music happening in town this weekend comes from piper Tim Britton (who plays with Seventh Ray, and engineered our album Dancing In The Light) and Pat Egan at Cafe Paradiso doing traditional Irish music on Friday night, and again on Saturday at Morning Star Studio for a Contra Dance.

Cafe Paradiso also hosts singer/songwriter Noah Earle this weekend.

On Saturday Mac Gayden, a lifetime working musician but famous mainly for his 70’s hit Everlasting Love, will be performing with Zenphonic – straight to Fairfield from Bonnaroo 2005 – at an outdoor concert at the Hurlin’s place.

Saturday will also bring an Iowa Telecom Live On The Square concert featuring The Ron Dean Quartet, the Fairfield High School Jazz Band, Dixieland Jazz Band, and the Orquesta Alto Maiz.

Not bad. Not bad at all for a town of only 10,000!

I’m starving and I have money in my pocket but I don’t want to eat anywhere in town. Mexican, roo-Thai, roo-Chinese, drive-through. It all sounds dismal.

Will someone bring me sushi, maybe? Oh God yes. Yellowtail. Manhattan roll. Tuna.

Maybe I’ll go eat Indian. *sigh*

Gold and Black is my latest skin for Wisbar Advance, for Pocket PC. All skinnable elements are skinned, and the theme comes with a default sound scheme.

Download it here.

Continue reading Gold and Black WA Skin →

I’m wearing yoga pants under my skirt today, and I ran the floor heat in the jeep during my drive in to town this morning. And it’s JUNE FOURTEENTH, fer chrissakes.

Apparently it’s going to rain all day today. Like we need more mud.

I am all about the possibility of an 8GB iPod Mini Coming Soon?. There are even rumors of color screens! I have to say, I’m still deeply enamoured by the mini form factor, and will probably upgrade to another mini rather than a regular iPod when I do upgrade.

I absolutely love del.icio.us and I think it’s utterly brilliant. It seems so simple and obvious I can’t believe no one’s done it before. It’s not just a bookmark manager; it’s a self-referral, live-updating amalgamation of ‘what everyone’s surfing.’

I feel the same way about Last FM. I found it a couple of days ago and it seems so obvious I can’t believe I haven’t been using this site for years. It’s an online radio station, and it tracks what people like. So when you sign up for an account and tell it what you like, it intelligently recommends music to you. And you can buy music from them, too. It’s almost creepy how simple and elegant this is!

Finally, here’s what I’m listening to this morning – I’m using Audioscrobber for iTunes to feed my tastes to Last FM. Oh yeah.