Cousin Itt
Did you ever see The Addams Family on television?
If so, you most likely remember Gomez’s cousin, Cousin Itt. Cousin Itt is a short being whose entire body is completely covered with hair.
Well, “it” paid us a visit this morning after having recently received a haircut.
Look ma…fingernails!
For the first time in, oh I dunno...probably ever...I’ve got some fingernails. One hand does, at least, but only because I can’t bend my blasted arm to get the hand up to my mouth.
Of course, I say the same thing about my feet.
Oh there’s gonna be a feast one day.
Online Olympics coverage
Have you ever watched the Olympics only to find that they didn’t televise the event you wanted to see? There’s no need to leave your computer for the next 16 days as NBC has made plans to stream the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games from the opening ceremony on August 8 to the closing ceremony on August 24.
In the 2006 Turin Winter Games, NBC streamed only one hockey game online. This year, NBC will stream 2,200 hours of 25 events live, with nearly the entire 4,000 hours of the games available on archive for North American Internet users.
You can watch the games here.
Jajah Babel
I know many of you are familiar with Skype. Skype is software that allows you to make very inexpensive calls to landlines or cell phones from your computer. We used it to call family while we were in China last September and it worked like a charm.
There is another popular, although lesser known, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service provider called Jajah. Jajah has released a new English/Chinese translation service called Jajah Babel just in time for the Olympic Games. The service, which was developed in conjunction with IBM, allows users to call a free number to get a near-instant translation of spoken sentences. The service isn’t meant for voice calls abroad - instead, it’s a handheld translator. After speaking your message into the phone, you hand it to the person you’re speaking with, and the phone spits out the translated message.
I tried it myself by dialing and asking the question, “Hello. Where is the nearest bathroom?” The translation from English to Chinese sounded a little bit awkward but then what do I know? I don’t speak Chinese.
Karys is bein’ slow
A little bit ago, I announced to Eliana and Karys that their dinner was warmed and they were to go wash their hands.
Several seconds passed and I had heard neither the pitter-patter of feet running to the bathroom nor silence from the television being turned off.
“Go wash your hands, girls!”
The cartoon continued to blare.
“Have you been to wash your hands?!?”
“Not yet dad”, Eliana said. “Karys is bein’ slow.”
My first thought was, “Well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
My second thought was, “Well she didn’t inherit that trait from our gene pool so it musta come by osmosis while Carmi lays down with her at night.”
Every taxi in Beijing is bugged
If you’re in Beijing for the Olympics kick starting this weekend, don’t be spilling any beans (state secrets or otherwise) in your cab back to the hotel, because you’re being listened to. According to the Wall Street Journal, on your taxi’s dash is a microphone that can be activated remotely, at any time and without the driver’s knowledge, for a live listen into any one of Beijing’s estimated 70,000 cabs. And then, if the folks on the other end don’t like what they hear, they can take things even further.
The GPS-equipped devices also allow for remote disabling by “cutting off the oil or electric supply,” effectively shutting down the engine and keeping it from being restarted. Yikes.
As the State Department has warned, you can expect to be monitored in just about every other place, public or private. It’s doubtful that every cab is being recorded at all times, but the technology is there if necessary.
Steven Curtis Chapman on GMA
Just an FYI.
During tomorrow morning’s broadcast beginning at 7:00 am EST, Good Morning America will have an exclusive interview with Steven Curtis Chapman.
The Chapman’s youngest daughter from China, Maria, was tragically killed on May 20th.
What a painful interview that must have been.
6.1-magnitude aftershock hits SW China
One person was killed and 23 others were injured in a 6.1-magnitude earthquake in Qingchuan County in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, at 5:49 pm on Tuesday.
The casualties were in Yaodu Township, which was also severely affected by the 8.0 quake on May 12, said an official in the publicity department of the Qingchuan County Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Ma Jian, chief of the publicity department, said the latest quake also disrupted communications in Yaodu. Details of other damage are not available yet.
The China Earthquake Networks Center said Tuesday’s aftershock struck Qingchuan, adjacent to Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, with the epicenter about 10 km underground.
It was felt in the cities of Hanzhong and Xi’an, both in Shaanxi, as well as Chongqing. Many people rushed out of buildings in those cities.
The death toll from the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province and its neighboring regions stood at 69,207 as of Monday noon, the State Council Information Office said in a statement.
The number of people listed as missing and injured stood at 18,194 and 374,468, respectively.
In the 96 hours ending Monday noon, three aftershocks measuring 4.0 to 4.9, one between 6.0 and 6.9 and 770 aftershocks at or below magnitude 3.9 were monitored in the quake zone, according to the China Earthquake Administration.
A total of 22,019 aftershocks had been detected since May 12.
[source article from China Daily]
Pikachu and dragonflies
We bought 4 season passes to Carowinds in April and had only been once before my hospitalization.
Since this is the last month that Carowinds is open during the week, Carmi took a vacation day today and treated Eliana to a day at the park.
When they came home, Eliana walked in with this huge Pikachu that Carmi won in a game. We’re not sure where Eliana will put it because her bed is already half-full with a variety of stuffed critters.
Eliana wore this pretty pair of dangly sterling silver dragonfly earrings that Carmi bought her at the Charleston Market.
Paying a handsome price
You’d think that a 45 year old with lilly-white legs would know to lather on the sunscreen while at the beach.
You’d think.
I didn’t think and now I’m paying a handsome price because my legs and feet were fried to a crisp.
So now not only do I go back to work fulltime today but I’ll walk in like a 95 year old man.
Happy Monday.
