• Thanks @mdjensen for info about iGeoCacher, the new geocaching iPhone app. http://tinyurl.com/5g2elk #

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Yesterday, PostSecret had two secrets that ended up being about the LDS Church. You can see them here:

It reads:

Every Sunday I sneak off to an LDS Church. My family has no idea where I am. I don’t know whose approval means more to me, theirs or the Lord’s.

The other secret was the polar opposite:

It reads:

I am so scared that this (like everything else) will not be the answer.

When I went to the local Unitarian Universalist church, there were so many people who felt betrayed by the LDS Church and had been abandoned by their families. The animosity that these people expressed over the religion was uncomfortable to me because I have many friends who are LDS. It’s hard to not have LDS friends when you live in Salt Lake City, Utah. The hatred and anger that these people felt free to express was counter to the teaching of the Unitarian church, which allows for free and open spiritual growth:

“Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth”

I’ve seen happy and productive lives of intelligent people within the LDS faith. I’ve seen agonizing rejection and hatred of people within the LDS faith. I’ve seen it work wonderfully. I’ve seen it fail miserably.

What would I say to these two people who sent their secrets flowing on the wind?

Beats me…

---

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.

Just seeing the Atari logo fills me with joy. It represented so much fun to me and honestly it never failed to produce. Unlike amusement parks and dance clubs, I haven’t grown out of my love for video games. They still fill me with joy, even the olds ones that I loved so much like Adventure and Centipede.

Here is a video of someone playing Adventure on Level 1:

Did you even know there was an Easter Egg in Adventure?! This video shows you how to access it:

I found this history of Atari and just clicking through made me happy.

• Gamasutra – Atari: The Golden Years — A History, 1978-1981

Now, the Nintendo logo has replaced my beloved Atari, but the love of the game is still there.

Via: WWdN: In Exile: have you played atari today?

• Twitter’s so slow it feels like a Sunday. #
• Getting ready for some dim sum in Vegas with Stacey & Dan. SO glad they came down! #

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Note to self: Time to get my stencils back out and make myself this t-shirt:

Ministry of Silly Walks Stenciled Tee by ofenjen from Flickr

I have so many things to stencil right now. I really need to get crackin’.

Via: Craftzine.com blog: Ministry of Silly Walks Stenciled Tee

This is the only reason I might ever be tempted to play Sims 2. I played the DS version of Sims 2, but I didn’t care for it. I tried playing the original Sims, but there was far too much dish washing, showering and maintenance for it to be fun for me. Part of the reason I’ve loved Animal Crossing so much is because I don’t ever need to make my little character take a shower.

I guess I’ll have to wait until November when Animal Crossing: City Folk comes out on the Wii. I have been waiting for this game for over two years. I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer and I’ll let Sims 2 Ikea alone.

Note to self: Make this clock for myself. Get over your fear of the drill and just be willing to try this. It reminds me of my childhood and learning to tell time.

• Retro Bottle Caps Clock | myLifetime.com

I have been looking for a clock like this in the antique stores. Why didn’t I just think of making my own?

Via: Craftzine.com blog: HOW TO – Make a Retro Bottle Caps Clock

• We’ve been waiting at our table at Planet Hollywood for 20 mins. No service yet. :( #
• @ charlieoliver Thank you so much for this! http://tinyurl.com/67236u #

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• @ TheLaughingImp and @mdjensen Isn’t it funny that all three of us have anniversaries today?! Ours is our 18th! #

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• Made it to Vegas. Trouble with LV Hilton Internet. :( http://snipurl.com/3h90u #
• Happy Anniversary to Mike and me. It’s our 18th! #

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• @ mdjensen Believe it or not, there are some new energy drinks that have alcohol in them. Probably one of those. http://tinyurl.com/6xvvf3 #

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• God, I miss Twitter IM. Seriously, I would totally pay a yearly fee to reinstate Twitter IM. How’s that for monetization?! #

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• I’m going to Sprague Library (2100 S 100 E) to work. I need to be around people to get stuff done. Anyone up for coworking? #
• @Jerekeys Sometimes it’s healthy to listen to people who don’t believe what we believe. Maybe you’re follower is trying to grow. #
• Heading to Sprague Library to work. If you want to cowork, meet me there. 2100 S 1100 E #
• At Sprague Library deep in the basement. #
• The Internet is slow as molasses at Sprague Library. :( #

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• @charlieoliver It’s Sunday and you used the letters K2. Did you mean K2 The Church? We got stuck in their parking lot last week. What up?! #
• @redG You can’t measure a forum by its members, only its usefulness. #

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Before every CodeAway, I panic. I’m worried that no one will show up and it will just be me and Mike hanging around for four hours. When I look at Upcoming.org and see that only two people have RSVP’d, I especially panic. Somehow, yesterday, it worked out. I didn’t panic. I told myself that even if it’s just me, Mike, Scott and Charlie, it will be awesome fun because Scott has something new to show off and Charlie is ALWAYS funny. Fortunately, the crowd showed up and I didn’t have to panic at all!

You can see all the photos here:

• CodeAway August 2008 – a set on Flickr

I am so grateful to the Utah Geeks community. Without them, Mike and I would have moved far away. With them, we feel like we aren’t so weird doing this Internet stuff. Our families might not be able to understand it, but our friends are right there with us and able to give us tips and pointers.

Thanks, everyone!

• Heading to CodeAway. #
• Leaving CodeAway. Great turnout this month! #

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Is this cat deaf?

I can’t get my cat to even come out from under the bed when the vacuum comes out of the closet, much less when I turn it on.

The idea of vacuuming a cat sounds crazy to me, but it’s OBVIOUS that this cat loves it!

I’m shocked and amazed!

Sometimes when we have car trouble it brings to mind every time I’ve ever had car trouble in my life. Even though it’s such a little thing in my life now, it used to be a life and death kind of thing when I was younger. When I have car trouble, my mind knows that it’s just an inconvenience, but my heart goes into my throat.

I can tell myself that it’s just a radiator boiling over, but it makes me feel like the Golf is unreliable. Sure, it’s a twelve-year-old car. Maybe it’s time for me to consider it unreliable.

All it took was a little water and anti-freeze to get it going again. It hasn’t over-heated since, but now my faith in that car has been shaken.

It looks like we have a late runner in the race for the presidency. Why had I set my hopes for a woman president with Hillary when I could have voted for Paris instead?!

If you have no idea what Paris is talking about, here is the McCain Ad she was talking about:

Via: BIBLE VERSUS: A RESPONSE TO MCCAIN

• @libel_vox If you don’t make time for networking, you end up without any work. You have to maintain relationships to keep a steady flow. #

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• @mdjensen What have I told you about self-diagnosis? If you trust Google more than your Dr. Time to get a new Dr. #

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I rarely look at my blog stats anymore. It’s not because I feel that they are worthless, but I tend to obsess about them to the point that I don’t work anymore, so I have learned to ignore them. Who knew that there was a goldmine of hilarity awaiting me there?

Colleen Wainwright, The Communicatrix, looked to her Google search results for inspiration for a talk she had to do at an adult-themed reading. I have many times looked at those strange search results, but I never thought of writing a song about them! Here is the definitely NOT SAFE FOR WORK video:

My favorite:

Cleavage!
Bouncy Cleavage!
Monster Cleavage!

Excellent work, Colleen! You had me laughing this morning!

• I have bought all my turnips. After almost three years of playing this game, I STILL love Animal Crossing. Looking forward to AC: City Folk! #

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• My iPhone thinks it’s in MN, not UT. I tried a restore yesterday to no avail. I know others have had this trouble. What up, Apple?!! #

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• @arcade30 A friend of my own heart!!! August is the brewing time for costumes for us as well! Halloween is our FAVORITE holiday! #
• Photos from the UT Blogger/Geek Dinner: http://tinyurl.com/566l8c #
• @kittygutz BTW, I couldn’t find Crystal’s twitter account. Which one is she? #
• @kittygutz Thanks! I’ve added @solysombra to my list. It was so nice talking to you guys last night. Hope to see you at other geek events! #
• @jeremyfranklin Mike and I have been having the SAME problem. We’re in Sugarhouse. Where are you? #
• Finished working for the day. Now time to clean and take care of family errands. #
• @mdjensen Mike downloaded that yesterday and it works pretty well. Faster than with my old Treo. No email support though. :( #

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I really enjoyed this month’s Utah Blogger/Geek Dinner. We had over 25 people show up this time. You can see all the photos here:

Blogger/Geek Dinner: July 2008 – a set on Flickr

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of myself. If any of you snapped a photo of me at the dinner, please comment with a link to it here.

I used the AirMe app on my iPhone to take and upload all these photos. It is good program for events like these because it will upload the photos to Flicker, put them all into a photoset and add tags for the location and weather. It made documenting the dinner SO much easier.

This month we had the dinner at Paradise Bakery. The kind of restaurants that let you stand in line and order and then sit down with the group with your food are SO much better for these events than the ones where you have to deal with waiters. I need to find places like this all over the city so we can have our geek dinners in comfort EVERY month.

• @justsomeguy Lunch: ramen noodles forgotten on the stove until all the water boiled out. Stuck to the bottom of the pan… #
• @FiddleyGomme Better start snappin’ photos and writin’ then. #
• @kittygutz If you are at 90th and State right now, you’re going to be late for the Blogger Dinner in SLC. Hurry up, girl! #

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The Blogger Blood Drive sponsored by Twelve Horses in honor of Serenity Burns went incredibly well. A special thank you to Steve Spencer for setting it up. You can see all my photos for it here:

• Blogger Blood Drive at Twelve Horses – a set on Flickr

I felt really tired and worn out all evening afterward. I’ve never had that happen when I’ve given blood before. On the plus side, I felt really good about myself as well. It’s like Captain Hammer says, “Everyone’s a hero in their own way, in their own not that heroic way.”

• Fun summer video from We Are Scientists: Impatience http://tinyurl.com/6lay4x #
• Note to self: Get this Roisin Murphy song when it become available: http://tinyurl.com/6xajt2 #
• Kalua pork for dinner makes me want to go to Hawaii. #
• @nakedjen Does Sundance have a naked division? #
• @libelvox Are YOU drunk twittering again? #
• Mind Hacks: You are what you buy and what you DON’T buy. http://tinyurl.com/4l2jd9 #
• Bedtime. Twitter off. #
• Good morning, my tweets! I’m ready for another fun-filled day! #
• Just back from my morning walk. Listened to the Comic-Con Totally Rad Show while I walked. http://www.totallyradshow.com/ #
• @jerekeys Drive safely. Wishing you the best! #
• @jeremyfranklin I’ve had the best luck at REI for bike shopping. Free tuneups, prices on the bikes and knowledgeable staff. #
• @jeremyfranklin REI 3285 East 3300 South Salt Lake City, UT 84109 (801) 486-2100 #
• Too much YouTube and Tivo this morning. I haven’t worked at all. Gotta get some stuff done before the blood drive: http://tinyurl.com/65u8mb #
• @ThomAllen OMG! That was totally hilarious! Super Dell is running for Governor of UT!! http://www.digitalthom.com/media/superdell.mp3 #
• @pilot_wanna_b I LOVED Dexter. I know I shouldn’t be routing for a serial killer, but I just liked him so much. #
• Heading to the blood drive at Twelve Horses. #

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• Testing Twinkle. I have to admit that the iPhone Twitter apps make me want to tweet again. http://snipurl.com/3767s #
• Rewatching Dr. Horrible on Hulu. #
• Printer mysteriously won’t print. I’ve got the green light, but no papers coming out. http://snipurl.com/377pw #
• Wondering which is better for the iPhone: Twitterific or Twinkle? http://twitpic.com/5tqw #
• @bradbaldwin If I see Jesse Stay, what am I supposed to do? #
• @kittygutz I’ll be at the Geek Dinner on Thursday. You can sit next to me and @nakedjen. #
• @humancell Looks like a baseball field to me, dude. #

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When I took this picture, Maggie kept moving her head away. She refused to look me in the face no matter how much I coaxed her and clicked my tongue. I can’t bribe her with food, she has no weaknesses except for the constant desire to be petted and held. She was on my lap and happy and there was nothing I could bribe her with.

Sid and I went outside to test the camera on my new 3G iPhone. I heard that it was inexplicably better than the old one, but I can’t really tell the difference. On a beautiful sunny day like today, the cameras on both phones work fine. I guess I should be testing this indoors.

In the end, the true killer features of the new iPhone is the 16GB of storage and the GPS. It’s nice to see that I have plenty of room on my iPhone now. I was pushing the limit with my 8GB.

• @libel_vox Just saw your Militant Geek t-shirt idea. Huge phallic symbol warning. Did you not notice it? http://is.gd/15cQ #
• When all my Twitter friends are from Utah, Sunday mornings are DEAD. Church or sleep has claimed them all. #
• @justsomeguy Thanks for that link. That video made me happier than it logically should have. http://tinyurl.com/5gyyjw #

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At the reunion last week, they took us on a tour of Kearns High. The first part of the tour was through the auditorium. The school got all new seats and the tour guide was pretty proud of it. She walked us through the dark auditorium. I remember thinking to myself, “She’s not going to turn on the lights? Someone’s going to trip over something in this dark.”

I realized that this was a negative thought and reassured myself that we would be just fine. There was light from the doors leading to the hallways and we had been in the sweltering heat of the auditorium for so long that surely our eyes had adjusted. Just when I neared the end of the trek through the dark auditorium, I felt like I had been worrying for nothing. I could see by the light of the door leading out and we were almost there. I felt stupid for worrying about tripping in the dark and scolded myself for not thinking positively.

Then I tripped on the seam between the floor and the orchestra pit.

As Mike gently picked me up from the floor, I thought to myself, “So much for positive thinking.”

Plaid Stallions has done it again and have brought a cherished memory from my childhood to life in vivid catalog color.

Sceverenia’s parents had a bar that looked just like this in their basement.

We played for hours at that bar. It wasn’t a bar. It was a storefront. It was a government office. It was a checkout counter. Heck, I think we even did homework up at that bar a couple of times when the kitchen table was full of rowdy drinkers.

That was the funny thing about the Kubota house. There were never any drinkers at the bar in their basement. I’m sure her parents bought it with visions of fun parties in the basement, but the parties stayed around the kitchen table. Honestly, the kitchen table was much more adept at handling all the people who came to their parties.

Ironically, the only place where you couldn’t get alcohol in the Kubota house was the bar in the basement. Scev and I had a lot of fun there.

Today, Mike and I went to TNT for our fireworks. Just in case you’re not from Utah, today is Pioneer Day and we are celebrating the Days of ’47 right now. Yes, in Utah, we get TWO independence days: one on the 4th and the other on the 24th. Pretty awesome, huh?!

We didn’t buy these fountains, but I thought it was funny that LOL speak has even hit fireworks.

You can see all my photos here:

• TNT Fireworks Stand 07-24-08 – a set on Flickr

Lately, I have been reluctant to write a blog entry that doesn’t have a picture to illustrate it. Instead of urging me to take more photos, it has limited my entries to a slow drip of boredom. Even now, as I think about what to write, I’m planning on snapping a quick photo to show you what I’m talking about. Why is that?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Am I just trying to save time? The thing is, without a picture, I have to describe things better. I have to actually WRITE something. With a photo, I can show you and there is no confusion, or at least, less confusion.

But what about those times when there is no photo? I have been ignoring those times in my life. The day I threw the Oreo shake out of the window of the car onto the parking lot of the Arctic Circle was retold many times among friends, but never graced the pages of Pick Me! Instead, it needed to be retooled and massaged to fit the plot line of Merriton. Instead of me being crazy, Sierra takes the blame.

Ironically, even though I didn’t get a photo of my Oreo shake incident, I have been on the lookout for one. Watching for what I wished that shake would have looked like when I threw it out my car window. I eventually found it:

Looks Like Sierra Had An Incident by Laura Moncur from Flickr

My shake was cleaned up by the Arctic Circle staff before it looked this bad, but this is EXACTLY what I wanted mine to look like when I was in the heat of anger. I’m just gonna to pretend that this was my shake and the revenge I had was sweet.

• Testing Twitterific on the iPhone. I like being able to upload pics, char count & icons. http://twitpic.com/50wa #
• @ThomAllen I just downloaded the WordPress app. Playing with it now. I like that I can include a photo in an entry. I had to use Flickr B4. #

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Always Something There To Remind Me by The Naked Eyes was of my favorite songs from the Eighties. I LOVED this video and I thought it was absolutely PERFECT. The final scene where he is stalking the places where he had seen her and then flashes of what he saw when he was there was genius to my fifteen year old mind.

Now, not so much…

I HATE it when something that I loved doesn’t hold up to my memory of it. It’s as if my memory of the video made it far better than it actually was.

The song, of course, it just as wonderful as it was when it was released. They really did an excellent job of updating the classic and I still love it to this day.

• Just slaughtered over 1600 comment spam posts that Akismet didn’t catch. I guess it’s time for an update… #
• @ashbuckles Nice to see you back! #

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