I'm home today sick (have strep throat) so I decided to finally write a couple articles. I just posted about my corn stove: Corn Stove (shameless plug) and now I am writing about the birthday cake I made for my daughter's Halloween themed birthday party last weekend. Being the procrastinator that I am, I waited until the morning of her party to decorate it. So, it was really a "do or die" type situation. I decided to try using Fondant to decorate with. As was poin...
Corn Stove? What the heck is a corn stove? Well, a corn stove is similar to a pellet stove (which burns wood pellets) except that it burns dried, shelled corn. This is a picture of ours (I can't take a straight on picture because a wall is in the way): It sits between our dining room and living room, and heats most of our house (which is over 2500 sq ft) Unlike a wood stove, it does not have a chimney, it just vents to the outside. The heat is circulated away fro...
Loss: My family has had a lot this month. My husband lost his Grandma a couple weeks ago. We had to have our 10 year old dog put down last Friday, and I just found out that an Aunt is going to die in the next few days. It has been a month filled with sadness and loss. It seems like we just start feeling a bit better about something, and WHAM! something else hits us. Pain: I have auto-immune diseases which are painful. However, it appears that emotional pain can...
Today I had to say goodbye to a dear friend of 10 years, Quincey. He had Cushings disease, that destroyed his muscle and body over the last year. We did everything that we could do for him, including importing drugs from the UK, but some things you just can't fix. I just got back from a business trip, and took yesterday off to get back on track. Unfortunately, it seems as if he waited for my return then just gave up. Within 36 hours, he quit eating, quit d...
I know that there are other articles stating that he died, but they aren't saying what I am thinking. Peter Jennings was an inspiration to me. Peter Jennings used to tell people to "stay in school". A lot of people may not know why he said that. He actually dropped out of school and regretted it for the rest of his life. But, his lack of formal education didn't stand in his way. He continued to self teach himself and learned from the world around him. He ha...
I am seeing a bunch of hit and miss posts about issues that people are having. However, it is impossible for the web programmers to find the reports in this fashion. Though Cordelia can relay the messages, she can't actually fix the issues (as can none of us expect the web team). So, please post your issues here. *BUT*, when you do, make sure that you are giving every detail possible. A "this site is acting odd" report will get us nowhere. Post when, where, and h...
Today marks my 10th year of working at Stardock. It's been 10 crazy years of learning the business and changing the business. When I started, Stardock was *very* new. I spent the first days before I was officially employed helping build furniture. I was the first official employee of Stardock...my how things have changed. I had no idea how much my life would change, or how much Stardock would change over the following 10 years. We started out as an OS/2 ISV. W...
I have recently read a bunch of threads that are nothing but pure harassment of fellow bloggers. These type of threads are completely in violation of the Terms of Use of this site. If I see these types of threads in the future, they will be removed from the forums. This type of behavior is not acceptable. People should be able to blog here without being harassed.
A few people have figured out that you can go to www.wincustomize.com and create an avatar that will show up on this site. It is actually a code bug that the programmers have left. If it is abused, it will go away, however. With that, I need to remind people that you are actually uploading to wincustomize. With that, you are doing so under the terms of Wincustomize. One of the terms of use states: "(a) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, ...
It seems that there are a lot of things that we could do to reduce our need for oil, yet we are slow to change our ways. We all know that we can make fuel out of corn (ethanol) and we *could* have many cars that run on it. Yes, it is not as efficient, but it is possible. However, the other day, I found out something that I didn't know- we can make plastic out of corn. I was looking for some unique products for trade show give-aways. I was looking at travel mugs (mainly be...
Every year around this time I look at my life and what I have accomplished. I try to keep things in perspective. I hear so many people who only talk about what they haven't done (which I have a huge list of, too) but seem to lose track of what they *have* done. This is the "cliff notes" version of this years evaluation: - Today is my 9th wedding anniversary with the man I adore. - In about 3 weeks I will be 33. - I only have a 2 year degree, but I never let that stan...
My husband never had dogs as pets when he was younger. I always had dogs. We now have 4 dogs. Three are older mini-Dachshunds, and the other is a young Welsh Corgi. For this story, we will be focusing on Holly, who is the young (about 1 1/2 years old) Welsh Corgi, Duke a 10 year old Dachshund, and Roscoe a 9 year old Dachshund. Quincey is the other one, but he really just cares about his food bowl and the couch, so he's not in this story. So, there have been thes...
All companies have typos. Once we had a newsletter that went out with the typo of "ObjectBra" instead of "ObjectBar" (it got a lot of response, too!) We can refer to these as "All your base are belong to us" moments. Well, I was registering at a conference that we are attending, and was filling out a boardroom form. When I pressed "submit" this was the dialog box: I think Yoda wrote that one.
Last night, BEHIND THE CAMERA: THE UNAUTHORIZED STORY OF "MORK & MINDY" aired on NBC. The story itself was interesting. It's hard to say how factual it was, since it wasn't authorized, but Gary Marshall was involved, so it probably has some credit. However, what *was* absolutely amazing was the actor who played Robin Williams. He was dead on. His name is Chris Diamantopoulos. more at: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/ny-ettel4202903apr04,0,7042327....
I love America, and I think that what we do is typically right. However, there are things that happen that make me wonder if we do things in a "do as I say, not as I do" type fashion. In another JU article: https://forums.joeuser.com/Forums.aspx?ForumID=120&AID=68063#530308 It was commented on how it is interesting to see how Americans were viewed in relation to the Vietnam war. In a museum that they visited, they saw that America was viewed as "puppet masters" by the ...