I remember my first Harry Potter experience.  The thick book with a cartoonish cover was very popular among my pre-pubescent peers.  Therefore, I had no interest in the book.  “Another fad,” I said to myself, with my nose in the air and finger in a pudding cup.

Then I received Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as a present.  I could either read the book or join the Tanner family in “Full House”.  Unfortunately, the Tanners had to wait because mom said summers are meant to be “productive”.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was a great book!  It pulled me from my familiar world of Narnia, into a world of lightening bolt scars and turbo broomsticks.  Plus, three headed dogs named Fluffy are way cooler than wardrobes filled with lions, witches, and Turkish Delight.

Sure Harry, Ron, and Hermoine were lovable and entertaining.  However, none of them stole my heart like Professor Dumbledore.

The knowledge… the power… the love for lemon drops…  Dumbledore was a senior citizen Superman whose job uniform was a nightgown.  Exactly how I pictured my magic-wielding Yoda.

With my nighty-wearing, snowy love interest’s dramatic death, in the sixth book, it’s no wonder why I refuse to read the seventh book – or why I refuse to watch the newest movie.  The series has become “One Tree Hill”, Hogwarts style.

Plus, everyone started dying book after book.  However, I guess reality isn’t doing much better…  The list of celebrity deaths is astounding!  Most recently added on was the fantastic Walter Cronkite and author, Frank McCourt.  If this isn’t the Grim Reaper’s cry for healthcare, I don’t know what is!  If these gold toilet possessing, Armani luxuriating celebrities can’t manage to stay alive, how does the government expect me to?

I guess my love affair with Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders had to come to an end at sometime.

So until I get Harry Potter’s healthcare, I’ll be taking shelter in my room.  You can dare to walk amongst the bacteria ridden air with cars zooming by and old ladies with canes, but I feel much better behind my fortress of pillows.  I guess I could take this opportunity to finish the Harry Potter series – or I could be “productive” and figure out how they get bubbles in bubble wrap.

Check out more of my blog at:

http://samanthamatsuda.blogspot.com/

In this post, I will show to you the troubles of the modern day web.

For those of you who tweet (don’t be afraid to follow… I don’t peck!), you may have noticed the tt entitled “IE6 must die”, (For those not in the know, that’s shorthand for “trending topics”… pretty much current events) and I must say I agree.
After reading the article, the main points were that the web needs to evolve, and that needs to leave IE6 behind. Okay. Good. I agree.

However, is the problem in Microsoft’s crappy applications, or in the fact that no body wants to upgrade to IE8/IE7? I hate 7&8 more than 6… at least it doesn’t screw EVERYTHING up…

No, the problem isn’t there either. The problem lies in the users of the web. Seriously, have you seen how some people spell on this thing? IT HAS A SPELL CHECK!!! USE IT!!! gah! Get’s me all fired up… jeez… and of course we can’t forget those who think that “(:” or “):” is okay to use rather than “:)” or “:(”. WE, LIKE NEARLY EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD READ LEFT TO RIGHT. Seriously folks, we need to figure it out. I don’t want to tilt my head right then left to see your crappy smile-y. People need to stop being total morons online, and start taking some responsibility.
For that matter, we also need to start using correct capitalization, as well as only using CAPS LOCK for statements which you are using to virtually yell, not as a replacement for shift… just keep your finger on the button for a few seconds, why don’t you?
Actually, come to think of it, the problem lies in the lack of typing knowledge. I say, if you can’t type 10wpm, you don’t deserve the internet. Besides, in every school nowadays they teach basic typing skills…. How do you expect to get a job ANYWHERE if you can’t type?
That’s what I thought.

oh well… that´s all I´ve got time for… I´ll be out for 2 weeks or so, but enjoy our guest blogger to come, Ms. Samantha Matsuda *cheer*! check out her blog here

LBCGFD day all started many years ago, when, after my father would return home from a long and boring airplane flight (for work) bearing gifts of scratch-off cards.

Although I was much younger then, when my ability to distinguish awesome things from non-awesome things was still being developed, I still knew that these lotto cards were, in fact, awesome. And they are. Still.
Anyway, it ended up that what ever money we won (or didn’t win) went into a special fund, our “scratch-card” fund. Ever since, we’ve bought scratch cards on and off, eventually winning back the $15 we put into the scratch card fund to start off.

But, because all things like that end terribly wrong, we lost those $15 and all the other winnings (a grand total of maybe $20. maybe).

Today, however, we broke our 6 month scratch card hiatus at The Taste Of Chicago, (which was, by the way, delicious. can you say “I can has turkey leg?”? OM NOM NOM!) due to the very attractive booth at where, if you purchased $35 of lotto tickets, you could spin a wheel with prizes to win.
So, $35, a t-shirt (our wheel winnings), and a belly full of food later, we arrived home, ready to scratch off our cards.

We won $4 and a free $1 scratch card. Whoopie.

But, I suppose it could be worth it. We’ll see when the cards are cashed in for new cards. Who knows? We could be the next mega-millionares!

**update**

Steve McNair just died. I beleive he was shot? RIP.

Yes, Michael Jackson is now in “Neverland”, for real. And he is joined by Ferrah Fawcett and, as of today, Billy Mays.

*Sigh* It really is a shame…

So this post (much like every other blog post by other bloggers this weekend) is a tribute to good ol’ MJ, FF, and, erm BM Billy Mays.

But rather than just crappy Youtube vids, I thought I’d give you the best stuff here.

and here it is.

here, we have little Billy Jackson, the cross between Mays and Jackson… and here we have the girl Billy Jackson.

Not gunna’ lie, I think makemebabies.com’s baby generator did a pretty crappy job with those babies… they don’t have a screwed up nose or a beard, and they are fully white.

yeah.

Here are the crappy youtube vids anyway.
I couldn’t think of anything to do with fawcett.

one of my favourites:

here’s a good ol’ billy mays commercial.

I won’t even bother with the FF vid… Just go watch Charlie’s Angles

this has nothing to do with the death of three very important people, but I love this vid anyway.

oh and check out these folks… sorry about the off-topic-ness, you can never stay on topic while browsing Youtube…

RhettandLink.com
they are cool indie film makers. pretty funny too.

Yeah.

It tasted like crap.

It was almost as bad as virtual spam, something I’ve been getting a lot of.

Yes, you may not notice it, but itsalloso has a lot of spam. Actually, you probably can’t notice it, because I am the only admin besides Jack (my partner in crime).
The interesting thing is, the spammers are getting trickier… by putting in comments that could-actually-be-real-but-probably-aren’t-because-they-don’t-pertain-to-the-topic-of-the-blog-post.
Take this one, for example, sent in by “Alex_mag”:
“Nice work! I’ll have to do a cross post on this one ”.
I read this comment and was kinda happy someone enjoyed the post and wanted to write about it. But, then I saw it was about my Twitter post (I’m sorry)(<that’s the post name). HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO A CROSS POST ON A QUICK NOTE OF BEING ON TWITTER?!?

I don’t know.
I suppose my logical thinking skills leave a lot to be desired.
Oh well, looks like I better start doing suduku.

Let’s take it from the top. Thisis my mom. She blogs. Her blog is, according to alexa.com, cooler than mine is. Does this mean she is cooler than I am? No, but it does mean that she has way more time to blog, and has money to spend to promote her blog, whereas I only have a measly 70 cents.
She also owns a stationary company, Zuzus Petals. She also is my mom. Yeah. I’m that awesome.

Anyway, she’s not the topic of this post here. No, the topic is one of the coolest ideas that she has ever had (so far as I know)
I present to you….(drum roll please)….

The staycation shirt!!! w00t w00t!!!
The perfect shirt for those of us who don’t go on giant, amazing, extravagant vacations but chill at home instead.

Take a gander:

Also available in mug, sweater, boxer, thong, button, and dog shirt (and others). Pretty badass. Check it out here please.

Feel free to contact with any requests (there are only like 6 cities out now).
contact email: stacy@zuzuspetalsonline.com

enjoy your staycationing…

Of course, we all think of different things when we hear those magnificent words, some think of something like a falcon or sparrow. Others think of the awesome flipping bird. (click here for a very funny {but explicit} video about the bird, and how to flip it {again, it’s explicit})
Still others think of the chirp, or more specifically, the TWEET of a bird (I’m referring to twitter). It happens to be that these people know of a great evil, a looming presence of doom, of technology, of constantly blocked up servers, of strange spammers that follow you, of @squarespace.
Yes it’s true. There is a great evil lurking in the depths of the clogged twitter servers. @jluebbert said that “it’s amazing how everyone who usually hates spam completely sells out just for an iphone” but then procedes to sell his soul for the promised iPhone soon there after.

For those of you who are too lame to have a twitter, actually have a twitter but don’t use it, are anti-twitter, or just have no idea what I could possibly be talking about, let’s start from the very begining….

It was on some day this past month that the large webhost Squarespace.com decided to give out 30 iphones in 30 days to 30 people over twitter. The catch? You must include #squarespace in a tweet to be entered.

So I did. I tweeted (tweeted? or twote?). 14 tweets and 3 days later, no iPhone. Thanks for nothing, squarespace. I send in such creative 140 character tweets playing off of the Oscar Meyer b-o-l-o-g-n-a song, pleading them, even trying to bargin with them. But no. Instead some guy who enters once with a crappy entry wins. yeah. I know. All my hard work for nothing.

But the thing is, I have spent too much time on it. I’m pretty sure it’s a marketing ploy by twitter to try and over crowd their servers. Because honestly, who actually uses twitter for anything other than news, some random 140 letter comedy spurts, and, of course, contests.
It also could be total bull. I mean seriously, how do they choose the winner? There are way to many people to choose from! I’m now starting to think that these “winners” have already won… hmmm… Perhaps there is no hope for me after all? or maybe there is… yeah I’ll put my money on the fact that it is.

It could, nay, will, happen.

1. A device that alerts you when you miss a call, Pagers need to get out of airplane safety announcements and into dumpsters. Because honestly, we have message machines and a really cool thing called “cell phones”. They’re like cordless phones that can go out of your house. Check it out.

2. The standard “free” phone, this Nokia needs to be shot with a rifle several times. No joke, this thing sucks. We got one for free when signing up our foreign exchange student on our plan. the stupid thing pretty much SUCKED. So for all you cheap-o’s out there (and I’m one of them), go out and get the $10 Razr

3. Capable of making you think someone wants to actually talk to you, along with being able to send a document from one place to another while making weird noises, the fax machine needs to be done with. Because honestly, the only thing people need it for is the legitimacy of your signature when it is used. wow.

4. Movie Credits. These things take forever, and when the people who are sitting next to you want to watch them, you need to crawl over them to get out of the theater, all while they give you stink eye for interrupting their movie! What’s that! They should just give you optional programs when you get into the theater. Which brings me to another point. What’s with the credits at the beginning of the movie? You get to the 5:00 showing of whatever you want to see at 5:00. Then, you wait for 15 min while they play the “screen vision” credits. The screen flickers black, then goes to wide screen, and the lights turn off. You watch 5:00 more of commercials, and then you need to watch the credits? That almost seems kinda backwards to me…

5. The knockoff of apple, The Microsoft Zune doesn’t deserve to have music put on it. Seriously, Microsoft. You’ve got the majority of PC’s under your control, and video game users (xbox 360), now you want to try the music lovers? Nice try, Gates. Or should I say, Ray Ozzie?

6. Confusing people everywhere, The word PC needs to be re-defined. PC IS AN ACRONYM PEOPLE!!! It stands for personal computer. I guess this means that a mac isn’t a personal computer, but a computer used in servers, or for companies, right? Oh wait, that’s right! THEY ALL USE IBM!!!

7. Trying to make ipod’s cozy and less sleek, The Chumby is pretty lame. In fact, I’d go ahead and give it the official Itsalloso stamp of LAME. Click the link to see why.

8. Giving people an excuse to read, Amazon’s Kindle. This product is pretty much an attempt at making people think reading is just like playing internet flash games. But it’s not. Actually, I’m going to go out on a limb here, Amazon, and say that this little “kindle” you sell is made for a little bit less than your asking price of $300. Instead, why don’t all you kindle-ers get a $229 iTouch and get the free book app? Or, you could always go to the library and get free books. That’s an option too, you know.

9. Blu-Ray dvds/dvd players are super mega lame. $40 bucks for a fricken dvd you’ll watch once? hmmm… sounds like a steal! What’s that? You can buy older movies that weren’t shot in HD on Blu-Ray for $30? AWESOME!!! MEGA LAME!

Oh well. Some day I’ll be laughing at people who use computers, cell phones, watch movies and read books. Of course, by then we’ll all be lazy fat people like those people in Wall-E who didn’t do anything.