I had little money this year. Being separated is a little more expensive. And I just spent $3100 on Rhonda. So, I made everything. Got creative since I couldn't go to amazon.com. I relaxed more under the surface. I also saw more of the free part of Christmas (grandkids' faces on Christmas Eve, beautiful lights glow, sweet TeddyBears under the Christmas tree, and people wearing Christmas hats).

Usually by this time every year, I'm ready to move on, put the tree away, box up all the knick-knacks, take down the lights, and Mr. Frosty. But this year, I might have to drag it out a few days. I still have a Christmas glow, and a happiness, and a peacefulness. A lovely convergence this moment in time.

Here's my TeddyBear.

I'm squeezed into a cube temporarily with my Mac, PC, Mac laptop, PC laptop, one internet connection. Learning new systems, learning new people, learning new contractor buzzwords. It's been a learning experience.

But, damn it. It's Christmas. First thing I did in my temporary cube was hang the Christmas lights. I'm the first one there in the morning. It's dark. I turn on my Christmas lights. I open iTunes and play Vince Guaraldi Trio's "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Eases me into Crazy Day.

Another thing that eases me into Crazy Day is this video on Karen's site. Uplifting. Makes me want to share the love. So, go out there say something nice to someone who needs it.

Here is The Unofficial Apple Weblog's interview with Fake Steve Jobs. FSJ is high on my cheap thrills list too. Regarding Microsoft's copycat business model and its stores, he says, “The whole point of being a close follower is you have to follow closely.”

Also: “…the other thing Microsoft seems not to understand is that it's not enough just to open a store—you need to have something cool to put in that store. That might be a problem for them.” I happened to catch that video of employees at one of their stores all line dancing. How do you spell spontaneity? Apparently not m-i-c-r-o-s-o-f-t.

Dakota discusses Four key principles of mobile user experience design .

Web design inspiration for the iPhone. Nice.

How to achieve painless registration. Tog brings up some good points:

• Site B has the customer immediately launch into filling out the checkout form, at the end of which the site offers the user the chance to register by just selecting a password.
• There are two approaches to increasing the “value proposition”—offer a bigger benefit or offer a more immediate benefit. Small immediate benefits can have the same impact on the user as big long-term ones.

Verizon to charge up to $350 early termination fee on “advanced devices”. Dang.

I take my health, not for granted, but as a given even with the asthma which I've had all my life. But when I read Mari-France's story, I just want to quit whining and say a thankful prayer. She uses a Mac to communicate, in particular SwitchXS. [Thanks, Ricky]

From McSweeney's: Caslon, Baskerville, and Franklin: Revolutionary Types. I love history and type too, so when they're mixed together, it makes great reading. That Sarah Eaves. Sounds like an audacious woman to me. [Thanks, John]

With Geocities going down, it made me think over that antiquated thing called a personal home page. I personally pooh-poohed those things called blogs (before that called journals before that called what's new) as too short to really encompass a person's being. And, ironically, my Sheep page is that last breathing thing on my website.

It all comes down to time for maintenance, for time to redesign, for time to dig deeper than Google allows for choice pieces of the web. Not enough time.

For archival purposes, I have kept my website intact. You can go to The Personal Homepage of LMichelle to check out most of the links. See the “frozen” section for the loveliness that was several years ago. My Stupid Penis Tricks still makes me smile and I'm just not going to apologize for those pages.

For a blast from the past, here are the links to my archived The Personal Homepage of LMichelle:

• 1995, November
• 1996, January
• 1996, August
• 1997, May
• 1998, June
• 2004

Here are the archived links from my front door of MiJo and Grownmnencry.com:

• 1995, November
• 1996, January
• 1998
• 2000
• 2001
• 2004

It's been an exciting fourteen years. Here's to fourteen more!

Tract home built in the 50's in Santa Clara, CA, starting out as white cubes, blossoming into rebellious individuality. [Thanks Jason]

Beautiful light photos. Just makes me smile. [Thanks, Jason]

AT&T's mixed iPhone message.

“AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets President and CEO Ralph de la Vega first trumpeted the company's third-quarter iPhone activiations (3.2 million, the highest number ever) and then downplayed the company's reliance on the iPhone by saying that the iPhone was just one part of the firm's smartphone portfolio.”

In this week before Halloween, I'm enjoying the guest posts of Jason's Halloween candy memories. Halloween was always so much fun for me until that first year when it was whispered that someone was putting in razor blades in the candied apples. Fear took the fun out. One of my sweetest memories, though, was of Sherah and her first Halloween out trick-or-treating. She was a little ghost in a pillowcase with holes cut out and a little ribbon around her neck.

I did sell Sheena Queen of My Jungle (PowerMac G5) and the new owner says she's keeping the name. So nice. And I sold my sweet LawnBoy lawnmower.

Yes, I'm raising money to have my darling Rhonda's transmission rebuilt and have her differential replaced. Got a discount at the transmission shop for letting them start on the job today, and they got me a free rental car to hold me over until Friday. Will post the name of the shop after I get Rhonda back and have put her through her paces. Hope their work is as good as their customer service.

She's been such a good car. So handy for driving around and moving boxes. I've had her for ten years, and the owner before me had her for ten years. I've been good about her maintenance and she pays me back in spades. Despite her 183K miles, she runs good with a few minor quirks. I hope to keep her for another ten years.

Sadly, I've had to have several dogs put to sleep. I always thought it was unfortunate that option wasn't available for people. I cringe at other forms of suicide: too messy, not a sure thing, potential suffering. This, Dignity in Dying, sounds like a good option to me. I thought I'd just use my nursing home money and go to Switzerland. I asked my daughter if she would go with me and she said only if we get to stop in Amsterdam. That's my girl.

Glenda's latest points me to three websites that I hope will further expand my knowledge:

• Darrell Shandrow's Blind Access Journal
• Ricky Buchanan's ATMac: Assistive Technology for Mac OS X, iPod, iPhone and Apple Users
• Karen Putz's A Deaf Mom Shares Her World

Upload the most recent version of Firefox (3.5.3). Microsoft has been up to no good again. Mr. Raving Lunatic has the details.

Jeremy is being cyberstalked by a paranoid existentialist chalkboard. Too funny.

A side note and link for Derek's post: The Atlantic's great idea about how to use HP's MagCloud.

Why people hate SEO… (and why SMO is bull$%t). I'm with Jason and Derek.

On a totally different note: Participated in California's largest earthquake drill. Working on the second floor, had to decide what to bring: iPhone, purse. Laptop could wait. Going down the stairs, knowing they will be shakey, out into the parking lot away from cars and away from trees. Yea! Survived!

While putting Sheena through her paces, I dug out my original Mac SE and turned it on for shits and grins. Sure enough, it couldn't find it's hard drive. I went in my storage room rooting around for it's mouse and keyboard and when I came back—happy mac face! I was so thrilled, until the screensaver came on and demanded a password. Dang! I went through my computer notebook which only goes back to '96 and tried every one. No go. I can't even begin to remember what kind of passwords I was using in the late 80's. Nothing fancy, just a word. Will have to revisit my diaries to see what kind of frame of mind I was in then and maybe that will give me a clue.

I love my new iMac, My Sharona. A terabyte of hard drive. So nice as I never throw anything away. I did migrate all of Sheena's files over and so I still have all my Stuff from former PowerMacs (Heidi and Elvis). And the 24" screen is super-nice. I got a 500G hard drive—Tangerine—for Time Machine. And my other external hard drive—Ruby—is holding my Only Copy copies of files that aren't on My Sharona.

My only complaint is that iTunes will open up all on its own and start playing. Have called Tech Support about it and it stumped them. Had to do the "twister" hard start and that seemed to take care of it. But then yesterday as Time Machine was doing its thing, iTunes popped up again. I think it's a Time Machine issue.

“Consumers continued to retrench in August, with borrowers reducing their credit card debt for the 11th consecutive month, according to figures released by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.”

[Thanks, Consumerist]

Yahoo! has a new mobile website. Looks quite nice on my iPhone.

3 great social medial policies to steal from. The key seems to be moderation. The IT organization where I work has taken the draconian approach to banning all YouTube, Flash, and Facebook, so I appreciate the moderate tone in these three policies.

iPhone users alert: AT&T is going to ‘manage’ our data now. In the immortal words of my dear Al Swarengen of the dead “Deadwood” series: fuckin cocksuckers.