Fiyah! - Apps Apps and more Apps

I won a Kindle Fire in a drawing in December. I lurve it far more than I thought I ever would. (Oh wait I had it before I went to CA so I must have won it in November).  I love the ease of use. I love the ease of downloading crap. I love the portability. I love that I can find free wifi almost everywhere so I don't have to have a data plan. (It isn't fancy enough to require a data plan, it has to connect to the world on wifi only.) 

So the first thing I did when opening the Kindle Fire - Apps. Now whatever Apps that I talk about are ones I've purchased of my own volition and not because I have received any renumeration for anything I may say or not say about their awesomeness or lack of awesomeness. Additionally, the fiyah uses Android platform (is that the right word) and you mostly have to get the Apps from the Kindle Store so I may have a bum app (which I do) which may actually be perfectly normal in the real App store but since I'm limited to the ones from the fiyah store I'm stuck.

First apps I downloaded were the mail, twitter and facebook app. Yahoo mail and twitter work just fine and mostly how you'd expect. They work just like the ones on your phone. The facebook app is a waste of time. It has some weird bug that limits what you can see to only the top 6 or 7 items in the newsfeed. Since I have zero reception (for anything cell phones included) in my office, I can't check facebook 400 times a day and can only do so at lunch in the breakroom or at the end of the day. Thus, when I use their facebook app I can see 6 events and that's it. Totes frustrating. I just use the web version of the facebook.

The next thing I downloaded were a bunch of games I'd heard of but never got to play... Oh and those group games that everyone likes. Sadly, for me, many of those have already been abandoned by all my friends who used to play them. :)  BUT I did pull down Hanging, Words and Scramble with Friends. I like all of them. I also grabbed Draw Something which I play with my mother of all people. Neither of us has very good artistic skills. But all those apps work just fine and the way you'd expect them to. No surprises there.

I also downloaded (and here's how you know I'm behind the curve) Angry Birds. That game IS addicting. I've completed almost the whole thing, but several times I've had to consult YouTube for assistance.  (Now there's an app the fiyah doesn't have - a good YouTube app, perhaps because it doesn't have a camera and recording capability?)

Netflix and Hulu Plus are both available. I'm currently a member of Netflix (although maybe not for long) and not a member of Hulu Plus (although maybe not for long) so we'll see. The netflix app works just fine and is easy to use.

I do love the pinterest app. I'm not sure why but I like the interface and how easy it is to see all the pins. I don't like that it seems like (and I could be wrong) that in the attempt to save space on the screen (or something), when I'm repinning I can't see ALL the boards I can pin on so that can get frustrating for me.

While I was visiting M's kiddos in CA (oh that sounds like I go there just to see the kiddos... ) While I was visiting M & the fam in CA, I downloaded several kiddo apps. What bugs me about kid apps (which is what I'm sure kids love about kid apps) is the need to add on to the app. I downloaded some free coloring apps and those were fine, but any of the dress up apps you had to buy up for more stuff. I have smartly turned off in-app purchasing so I did not get a $600 bill from Amazon for my in-app purchasing. Oh unlike the iphones (and my droid phone) Amazon provides me a receipt for any app I purchase. (Even those that are free) Since those are automatically sent to my email I would see it much quicker if I had kiddos doing in-app purchasing that I was unaware of.

The app I just recently downloaded (and the actual reason for my app posting) is called Erase Debt. I put in my debt situation and give it some variables such as how much extra I can put toward debt and it calculates for me my debt payback schedules and how long it would take and how much I'm paying over the purchase. I'm hoping this app helps keep me on track to become debt free in the future. I like that I can adjust how much I want to put towards debt repayment per month and it will readjust the repayment schedules. I also like that it isn't tied to anything so there's no sharing of data between that app and my card companies or anything.

And let's not forget the Fiyah's original use - books. All my already purchased books hang out in 'the cloud' and I can pull them down or remove them from the device anytime I am hooked up to wifi. (Well I can delete them anytime but I can only pull them down when I'm connected to wifi). I like that the fiyah is back lit so I can read in the dark. It is probably bad for my eyes or something but I like reading in the dark. My local library has books for me to check out and since I can access the internet from the fiyah I can do it all on the fiyah and not have to go back and forth from computer to kindle. If I decide to join Amazon Prime (in consideration), I can also check out books from Amazon Prime's lending library so that's nifty too.

A Number of Little Things

Carbonite: Carbonite FINALLY finished backing up Sampson. I transferred the account to Bianca today and now she is receiving a dump of everything that was on Sampson... my music, photos, documents etc. It is so much easier than it was when I went from Jakob to Sampson. (Hmm unrelated to anything, Bianca might be the first female thing I've owned. Wait, I forgot. My Mac (which is still in the basement and is 15 years old) was named Zelma after my first landlord in Alaska.) Then I had to load things onto my MP3 player and transfer the files that way. With Carbonite I don't have to do anything. It will include everything. Michelle was the one who suggested it to me, and I think it is totally worth the money. (I could be wrong).

Back to work: I don't want to go back to work tomorrow. It has been nice to be off the week +. Luckily job hunting will be back on track.

Sampson: I know it is irrational but I do feel a tiny bit sad about replacing Sampson. I do recognize it is irrational. Perhaps it is bad for me to name things. ;)

Is back-dating cheating?

I'm trying to do the blog a day thing for a month but I have already failed! I can't help it. I was so exhausted after water aerobics that I fell asleep on the sofa at 9:45. 9:45! I only got home at 8:00. I woke up at about 11:15 and stumbled to bed and fell back asleep until this morning. When I woke up again and then laid in bed for about half an hour - 45 minutes and then fell asleep again! Seriously I'm wiped out. Damn bronchitis.

I may not have been fully up to attending water aerobics anyway. About 3/4ths of the way through class I started the deep coughing. I persevered but mostly was doing relatively easy exercises. I wanted to go because my damn foot (christ I'm an OLD person aren't I? An entire post devoted to my crappy health. Why don't I start bitching about where my cane is and those damn kids on my lawn next?) has been bugging me.

Poor Ghetto Sampson*

So this morning the first time I woke up (4 AM after going to bed at 1 AM thank you heartburn. :S) I came out to the livingroom after the pepcid I took did not help. While I was out here playing on the computer I discovered that the right hand bottom corner of Sampson's monitor (which had been steadily breaking) finally gave up the ghost. So now it is a little hard to open and close the computer. So in an effort to repair him I was going to use black electrical tape to hold the corner on better. Sadly, I can't find it (or maybe I used the last of it?) so now... masking tape. Seriously if he were hanging out at the high school the other kids would really pick on him.

*Sampson is the name of my current laptop. You may or may not recall that I name certain products that I may some day need to yell at or beg and plead with... Sampson the computer, Pip the iPod, Ben the Bronco, Jakob the old laptop. So far the Kindle doesn't have a name yet but that's because I haven't thought of one I like.

A new toy!

I was looking at my netflix list earlier today and I saw that you can get a netflix player for 99.00. I haven't bought it, but I am intrigued by it. Netflix now has that thing where you can watch now instead of waiting for the dvd to arrive. This could be an interesting thing and allow you a lot more access. As always, though, I'm hesitant to buy something before I get a chance to try it out. I wish someone had them available for check out. :)

You go Yahoo!

Yahoo is still fighting off the unwelcome advances of the Evil Empire. I'm hoping they'll win, but I have the feeling they can't last forever. I don't like the combination of the two because while I grudgingly use Microsoft products (like I have a choice? (Ok I do have a choice. I could run a mac or linux or whatever blah blah blah but really the choice is pretty limited)) I don't love most Microsoft products. I stopped using their hotmail a long time ago (with the exception of a few college friends who still email me there). (Ok full disclosure - I do like some of their computer games like Age of Empires and I think Zoo Tycoon might be theirs. (OMG! I almost misspelled that there's!) and I do play games on MSN more than I do on Yahoo). Anyway I've totally digressed and what I really want to say is that I love Launch and Yahoo's Email and I don't want them to become Microsofted. Also Microsoft's search SUCKS and that's all I have to say about that. Keep fighting Yahoo!

Camera Fun!

For my birthday my mom gave me a new camera. I'm very excited. And I'm obsessed with it. It is awesome. It can go up to 10 feet under water. It can get cold to 14 degrees and I can drop it from 5 feet. I'm rather impressed because she tends to be a bit odd about things she gets me.

She got me an Olympus Stylus 850SW in hot pink. How awesome!

This is a house across the street from the Northwest Puppet Center. I played with Photoshop to make it look old and weathered. It is a gorgeous house and I covet it.

The camera also has super macro. How cool!

This purple flower was at the PCC when I was selling cookies with the girls. So cool. I lurve it.

Learn Something New Every Day

I was just checking on Metro's trip planner and I was thinking, how am I going to know which way to walk once I get to a place. This is a frequent wonder for me because frequently I'm going somewhere I've never been before. I never noticed before that they actually have walking directions for the rest of the route. How cool is that? Very cool I say.

Totally unrelated, I went to see Be Kind Rewind over the weekend. It was HYSTERICAL. Seriously probably the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. It also was really different than I expected it to be. I don't know how to explain that and I can't tell you what I was expecting, but it was different. It was very sweet. Maybe I've got a preconceived notion of what Jack Black movies are like, but I found it really very good. My only complaint is that some of it is shot as though it is an old movie and so the projector 'flickers' and I had a headache already and that seemed to encourage it.

Cognitive dissonance avoided

I hate You tube. I mean I really HATE You Tube. I also hate it when people send me You Tube links and expect me to look at them as if I care and then ask me questions about it. So you can imagine my chagrin when I was googling Somali children's songs and getting hits that brought me to you tube. Oh no, it could prove helpful! How to readjust my thinking? Luckily I didn't have to. The links were totally not useful. Phew. That's much better. My world remains in place.

Unrelated, I have a bunion. What the hell is that about? I went to the store to buy bunion pads or something and the best I can do is buy moleskin. The bunion pads are more to protect the foot on the side and I need to protect the bottom and then I was also reading about putting a spacer between the big toe and next toe to force the big toe back into alignment. (because that's what a bunion is... a growth that causes your big toe to start moving towards the little toes.) Seriously, we could amputate my right foot right about now and I'd be fine with that.

IT Rules!

I emailed one of my buddies in IT asking if they had an AC adapter I could borrow and they totally did! Yay!! I think this means I can't say anything bad about IT for a while. :D

Wiping me out!

Those little girls wipe me out. Last night I got home at about 10 til 8. I ate my tacos and watched America's Next Top Model and then I couldn't find anything else to watch. So I looked at the On Demand stuff and picked Dirty Dancing. I love Dirty Dancing and it's mindless and perfect since I was mostly doing other stuff anyway. Apparently somewhere around the "Penny's in trouble, Baby" part I fell asleep. I woke up when Johnny and Baby were dancing in the rehearsal room after they'd already done the show at the Sheldrake and all that. And then apparently I dozed back off and woke up again at the end of the movie. And I only had 3 girls show up. I can't imagine how tired I'll be when the others regularly show up.

Apparently I need a new DVD player. I went to open mine last night to watch my latest Netflix DVD and it wouldn't open. Not even a little bit. Not at all. Sad. It is probably hmmm... I've lived here 5 years now and I bought it with Michelle in CA at KMart at one of the after Thanksgiving sales so I'm going to go with it is at least 6 years old if not older. I suppose I could get a new one. But then what do I do with the old one? Hmm...

Hmmm... Do I make it public?

I'm doing Nanowrimo again this year. I do it every year with the best of intentions and then never finish. My I suck. :) I think last year I got the closest I've ever gotten which was 25k words. Not too shabby. Already it is the 5th of November and I'm behind. I should be doing 1166 words a day. I'm at 155. Total words. Sad isn't it? I'm kind of excited about the story I'm writing and I'm considering blogging it. A lot of people do. The complicating factors are as follows: 1 - I'm terrified of judgement. I don't want y'all judging me. 2 - I'd want to post the link on my nanowrimo page so that people could see it which, if I used my blogger id, would lead to the potential of the former WC and another person finding this blog. I think. Ok I see that actually I can remove all the different blogs from my profile. Phew. BUT we're still back to concern number 1. I think I'm going to do it. It'll make it easier to post from various spots like work and home. Coo'

Addictions

I'm sitting here enjoying a lovely Gluten Free cupcake from Sunny Valley Wheat Free and enjoying every morsel of it and dreaming of my next trip down to freakin' Maple Valley to get more. (I say that like Maple Valley is THAT far away. It is 26 miles away. ConsideringI used to work in Auburn, Maple Valley is down the block) Anyway, starting in January my coworker, Red, goes back to Agility Training for her dog. Do you know where this training is held?? Maple Valley. How awesome is that?! She said she eats at the Taco Time which is right next to my bakery every time she goes. She is willing to pick up GF goodies for me. She said she never mentioned it to me because she figured I'd never want to drive all the way out there.... Oh little does she know. :) So now I only have to flexcar it out there until Jan. Awesome...

My other latest addiction... Peggle on MSN. I know it is the evil empire's site and all that but the game is so addicting! I love it! It combines two things I think are very fun... Plinko and pinball. (I don't believe I've ever really discussed my unholy love of pinball, but if you, dear reader, and I were ever to go to an arcade... that's where all my quarters would go.) Is it really a bad sign that given how nice it is outside, I choose to spend my lunch hour playing the online version in my office? (Yes, Stephen, I know it is. :) )

As Mickey is my witness... I shall never go back again!

So I got my new fancy pants wireless modem in the campus mail today. I have just finished setting it up. Oh holy hell is it fast! I can't believe how fast everything is. I can't believe what I used to put up with! :) So I am now a part of the 21st century. I am not even sure how to cope. I could download episodes of The Office if I want to! :)

In other news I couldn't give blood yet again today due to low iron.

And I saw the blind literally leading the blind today. While I was walking to try to give blood there was a man with the dark glasses and service dog and a woman holding his arm and she had a cane in the other hand. At one point one stopped and touched the face of the other.

Instant gratification

Screw my 3 year plan. Maybe I'll save my money to go on this... Winter Cultural Tour China. (Although now that I've looked at the dates, I totally can't do it. That is smack dab in the middle of open enrollment and since I'll be the boss it isn't like I can just take a 19 day vacation. Plus who knows if I'll have 19 days of vacation saved up by then. Actually I do know. I won't have it. Sigh. But how awesome would it have been?! Someday I will go there.)

The reason this comes up... I got an email that was actually apparently a reply to all indicating that this guy wanted off the mailing list and never ever email him again. Are people unfamiliar about how to respond to an email without using reply to all? And also this was a list you had to opt in to be on so it is his own damn fault he's there. (Although if he hadn't apparently I deleted the email without even reading it and so I never would've known about the trip. Hmmm.... maybe I need to see if we ever offer something like that and if they ever need chaperones... ;) )

New Toys for Sampson!

Sampson got a present in the mail today. I'm sure he'll be ever so happy. He's been having a hard time with overheating lately. It happened last summer too. It's just too hot and he sits on my lap which doesn't help things. (Actually he sits on an aluminum cookie tray on my lap). So I went online and ordered him a laptop cooler to help this out. I'm hopeful that he'll stop shutting down randomly since I do not like that. (And according to what I've read he doesn't like it either).

83 Posts away

With this post I am now 83 posts away from 2,000. I should do something special for that. I don't know what though.

Unrelated there is a giant fly in my office and it is annoying me a lot.

Also unrelated. I was sitting on the floor of my office stuffing retirement plan enrollment kits into a drawer when I thought of the phrase 'dinkin flicka' from The Office. It cracked me up because it was so random.

IE vs Firefox & Blogger

So I may or may not have revealed that recently I pulled IE 7 back off the computer. I hated it and it was logjamming the computer so I was done with it.

When I did that, though, a mysterious thing happened. Blogger stopped working in IE. The links wouldn't click. So at home I started using firefox if I knew I wanted to use blogger. Periodically I'd go back to IE to try it out and then things got weirder. Posts I would make at home using firefox wouldn't show up but posts that I did at work using IE would. So there'd be gaps in posts. (Using the home IE. The work IE had no issues like that even though I'm still using IE6 at work too.). It was altogether weird.

The point being that last night when I went online and checked out my blog using firefox I discovered the new masthead is about an inch too long. But when I look at it using IE it is just fine. That annoys me and could explain why when I did the first layout change using firefox it didn't seem like it was too short but when I looked at it on IE I could see that it was. But this means that when I change the masthead at home I'm always going to be changing it just wrong and since I can't use IE at home with blogger. Grr...

Something new to obsess about

I've never sent out an evite. I know I know. So I sent out my first one today. Apparently I'm now going to obsessively check my evite to see who has rsvp'd for the party for my Service Unit. (I do have the option to email the responses to me turned on, but like a little thing like that will stop me.) :)

I will apparently also feel sad when people RSVP no.

Fair Warning

I will continue to futz with the blog template. :) Especially now that I've realized that I get rather tunnel visioned and can mess with all the templates and still put in my own header. :) I like what I've done for now, but when I go home I may change. I have a couple other photos I've taken that may make good headers.