One of my friends is looking to get rid of 3 $50 iTunes gift cards.

Will sell them as a package or individually.

Any offers before we look to eBay?

I haven’t posted much recently, mostly because I haven’t had much to talk about.  But today marks 20 months since I moved in with my grandmom, so I’ll do my usual little monthly update about her life and mine.

Nana

My grandmom, quite frankly, is not doing very well.  Although the back pain that I mentioned in my last monthly update seems to have vanished, she still isn’t eating.  She is down to 95 pounds–nearly 50 pounds less than she was when I moved in in November 2006.

She is still getting weaker.  She now can’t get up out of her chair or out of her bed without considerable help.  About 90% of the time, she cannot stand up without someone standing behind her and balancing her, and about 50% of the time that person also has to support most of her body weight by holding her under her arms.

Even with someone always right by her side, she has still managed to fall twice in the past month.  Once, when I was supporting her with both hands, I took one hand off to flip on a light switch.  She slid right out of the other hand before I could catch her.  And just an hour or so ago, while I was waiting her her outside of the bathroom (I normally turn my back to her and she tells me when she is finished on the toilet), she somehow managed to launch herself head-first into the bathtub. 

She has had maybe a dozen falls in the 20 months that I have been here, but only three of those have occurred while she was being closely supervised.  Two of those three have come in the past month.
(The rest have occurred either in the middle of the night while I was asleep, or when I stepped outside for a few minutes).

So, she now needs constant, close supervision.  Even holding her with one hand and keeping one eye on her isn’t close enough sometimes.

Recently, she has taken to asking me, “When is Gary going to be here?”
When I ask her who I am, she knows that I’m Gary, but she just can’t put two and two together; she doesn’t realize that if I’m Gary, and I’m here, then Gary is here.

Overall, though, her demeanor hasn’t changed all that much, and if you just stopped by for a few minutes, you’d probably be pleasantly surprised.  To an outsider, she probably wouldn’t seem quite as bad as this post makes her sound.

In fact, her brother visited this week.  On average, he visits one or two times a year.  He was here this past Thanksgiving and the Christmas prior to that.  He can clearly see that she is not well, but I’d imagine that he probably hasn’t noticed too many changes between this visit and his previous two.

My grandmom and her brother.

Me

Me?  I’m doing pretty well.  Aside from the fact that I think I’m fighting a summertime cold.

I’ve had some good news recently.  My job just asked me to work from home half a day a week in addition to my two days in DC.  Also, I will most likely be going to Chicago to watch a baseball game next week, and maybe even to Toronto next month if this cricket tournament actually happens.

Last week, my second cousin, Kara, got married, and I went with my mom.

It was a beautiful wedding.
Because I knew hardly anyone there, I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy myself.  But I ended up having a very nice time anyway. 

It was nice to see the bride again, as well as several of my relatives.  It had been years.  Maybe a decade.
My immediate family is very small, so even my closest relatives are fairly distant (great aunts, second cousins, etc), but it still was good to see them again.  I kind of wish I knew them better and saw them more.  It’s strange when I stop and realize that I actually have family members besides my mom, dad, and grandmom.

On the drive from the ceremony to the reception, we passed this sign:

I thought it was hilarious.

Also, since we’re on the topic of random pictures, I spotted these two birds today just a couple of blocks from my house.  We rarely see birds like this around here.

Any idea what they might be?

I’m watching the Euro 2008 final on TV.

Why is it that ABC/ESPN is abbreviating “Spain” as “ESP,” but abbreviating Germany as “GER”?

It seems to me like they should pick a standard and stick to it–either abbreviate both in their native languages, or abbreviate both in English.

“GER vs SPA” or “DEU vs ESP.”

But then again, NBC referred to the host city of the last Winter Olympics as “Torino,” instead of using the English city name, “Turin.” This, even though they referred to the host city of the previous Summer Games using the English name, “Athens,” instead of the the Greek “Athina.”

I don’t mean to be pedantic, but I get annoyed when professional media doesn’t have a consistent style.  It’s a pet peeve.

Since I’m talking about international sports tournaments, I might as well point out here that I think the new Youth Olympic Games are a terrible idea.  But that could be a post in its own right.

By chance, do any of my readers use Google Reader to share feeds?

If you do, I’d kind of like to add you to my friends. (AT, MS, and NS, I’ve got you three already.)
I’d be interested to see what other people are sharing.

Also, if you don’t know what Google Reader and/or RSS is, let me know, and I’ll explain.  If you read a lot of blogs, it will make life much easier for you.

(Aside: I just got back from DC. I should have posted this from there, just so I could put a different city in my dateline. lol, yes, I’m a loser.)

When people (or forms) ask me how tall I am, I’ve been quoting 5’11″ as my height since the end of high school.  Occasionally, I’d bemoan that I just missed the 6 foot mark.

The other day I realized that I hadn’t double-checked this height in about 7 years.

So, out of a combination of boredom and curiosity, I measured myself.

5′ 11.75″

So, I missed the coveted 6 foot mark by a quarter of an inch.

However, I think that means that I should be rounding up to 6 feet on forms, instead of rounding down to 5’11″.  After all, I’m closer to six feet than five-eleven.

So, next time you ask me, I’m six feet tall.

Click here for the Geography Bee mini-test.

Every year, to coincide with the National Geography Bee, National Geographic’s website posts a mini Geography test.  Every year, I miss a couple that I shouldn’t.  And every year, I try to post the link here.

Give it a try! It only takes about two minutes.

I got 7 out of 10 this year.  I’m annoyed at myself for two of the ones that I missed; I should have gotten them.  The third, I had no clue on.

Overall, I think this is the best one that they’ve posted.  I usually have a few gripes over their questions, but I thought this year’s were good.

I just bought a great new HP backpack for my weekly business jaunts to DC.

But, for the life of me, I just can’t figure out what that external pouch is for.

It’s too small for an umbrella, and too big for sunglasses. One side of it is a loose mesh, which doesn’t really make sense for pencils. I figured the mesh must be there for a reason, like to let moisture out. But it’s way too small for a toiletry bag.  I suppose it could be for power cables, but that seems awfully impractical.  So, I’m all out of guesses.

Any ideas?

By the way, if you’re in the market for a laptop bag that also doubles as an overnight bag, I give this two BIG thumbs up. For my trips to DC, a shoulder bag is impractical considering how far I have to walk. But I’ve also found that most backpacks designed for laptops don’t give you enough room and/or organization to be a practical way to carry clothes and your computer. I made do with a traditional backpack for a while, but this makes things so much easier by keeping everything organized and compartmentalized. This bag gives me everything a I need: A padded compartment for my computer, room outside the pocket for file folders and power cables, a larger main compartment that easily fits my toiletry bag and a change of clothes, and some smaller compartments in the front for various items (business cards, pens, mp3 player, etc.). My only complaints are the HP logo on the outside (I don’t really like the fact that my backpack advertises the fact that I’m carrying expensive electronics), and the fact that they could have added a few extra straps to hang things off of. Still, I’d give this back a 95 out of 100. I’d be happy with it at $75, but you can find it online on sale for around $30!

And, yes, it also fits that mystery pouch. If you have any guesses as to what it is supposed to be for, please leave a comment.

When I bought my laptop back in September, I decided to have some fun with it. I didn’t go after the highest-end machine out there; instead, I wanted to see how much functionality I could get out of a bargain-basement machine ($350 + $25 memory upgrade) using only free software. I downloaded OpenOffice, GIMP, Firefox, VLC, etc. And I was shocked by just how much performance I’ve been able to get out of this thing. (After I reformatted my HD, that is.)

I’ve still been keeping my eyes out for free programs to enhance my computing experience, and I recently came across two pieces of lesser-known software for Windows that I wanted to recommend.

The first is FoxIt Reader:

Foxit Reader is a free PDF document viewer and printer, with incredible small size (only 2.55 M download size), breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set. Foxit Reader supports Windows Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Its core function is compatible with PDF Standard 1.7.

For most people, this is suitable as a replacement for Adobe Acrobat reader. I know it is for me. It does everything that I commonly use Acrobat reader for, and it is SO much faster. A pdf now opens as quickly as a web page does over my high-speed connection; I no longer have Acrobat installed, and I no longer have to deal with splash screens, long load times, phantom start-up programs, or the slow-downs that accompany Adobe’s RAM-hungry pdf reader.

The second is XNeat Windows Manager:

XNeat Windows Manager adds additional features to the Windows taskbar and system tray, that enables you to minimize any window to an icon in the system tray (instead of the taskbar), keep any window on top, set a custom transparency level, and also hide any window or tray icon, furthermore the program allows you to re-arrange the order of the taskbar buttons by simply dragging them around. XNeat Windows Manager integrates into the right-click menu of the taskbar and system tray. It also allows you to change the taskbar appearance by hiding the Start button, system clock and other elements.

Caveat: I’m using Vista Basic, and I think some of this functionality may be built into the Aero GUI of higher-end versions of Vista. But for me, this adds so much functionality that I don’t know how I ever did without it in the past. I find XNeat especially useful for locking streaming video windows to the top of my screen so that I can work or browse the web in full-screen windows without having to toggle back and forth between window. It’s also convenient to transpose numbers from web pages into spreadsheets. And, although I never missed it before I had it, being able to re-arrange taskbar buttons and minimizing items to the systray is also convenient.

My “low-end” computer does literally everything I need it to do without compromising on performance. In fact, it has been that way for a while. But these two utilities have helped bring my computer up to an even higher level. I recommend them both.

DC was abuzz this week with excitement over the Pope’s visit.

This morning, he held mass at the new baseball stadium.

If you know me, you know that I love sports stadiums. 

One of the pre-eminent books on baseball stadiums is called “Green Cathedrals.”

So, Benedict held mass this morning at a Green Cathedral.

How appoperiate.

My website is five years old today.  Wow!

Just thinking about all of the things I’ve done in the past five years kind of makes my head spin. 

I’ve blogged from Syracuse, France, DC, NJ, and a few other places, too.  Going through my blog archives is a fun way to revisit some of the memories that the past five years have brought.  It’s been a blast, and I’m glad I have my own little virtual chronicle here.

In some ways, this site is for myself.  But in others, it’s for my readers. 

I don’t really have anything special planned for the anniversary, so I guess I’ll just use this occasion to thank everyone who has been visiting loyally, in spite of my sometimes sporadic blogging habits.  (Sorry about those!)

I thanked Danny Dean the other day, but I singled him out mostly as a joke.  Dan has recently been nagging encouraging me the most to start posting again.  So, I knew at least he was still visiting during my down-time.  But I haven’t forgotten about anyone else! :-P  haha.

So, thanks Matt!  And Ashish!  And mom!  And everyone else who I know (or suspect) is reading loyally.  (Not sure if I should post some of your names, but I know you’re out there.)  And thanks to the people who google randomly sends my way.

So, thanks everyone!  And happy birthday, garybutterworth.com!  Here’s to many more years!

And, don’t worry, I have some posts in the works for the next week or so.  I’m back on the blogging track!