Lundy Says-Amusing Info from Lundy Wilder

OK-How long has it been since you ran 1. CounterSpy 2. Spybot 3. AdAware Don't even think that the WinXP built in anti-spyware net catches it all. (and how long since you went to Control Panel/ Performance & maintenance/Clean up ?) Go to this page and do what it says: http://www.scrapbookscrapbook.com/computer-scrapbooking.html and for goodness sakes, if you get a new computer, don't go plugging in every USB device in that you had on your old computer until you dig out the original manuals and driver disks. I witnessed a friend's brand new ultra Sony VAIO desktop go beserk when a external HD back-up was plugged in before the drivers were installed. Just remember back to all those bright orange stickers that was on the stuff you bought that said "DO NOT PLUG IN UNTIL SOFTWARE IS INSTALLED" update: my friend says that something else (a internal manufacturer's hardware problem) may have been at fault w/ his new computer issues. But, just the same, those ...

Click for large PHOTO ! In case you are not aware--it is Mardi Gras time down here. It is a BIG DEAL all along the Gulf Coast. Too bad it hasn't caught on further north. Anyway....Inspired by the car on the sidewalk in Mobile at the Explorium (see post & photos from this week), I decided to buy a 10 dollar purse today from my fashion headquarters , Wal-Mart, and decorate it for use during Mardi Gras. Originally, I was looking for a plain-ish small--ish purse that I could wear to Mardi Gras festivities and on bicycle slung across my body diagonally (Europerean style, I might add). I needed one that was roomy enuf to hold my phone, camera, sm. lady-like Swiss Army knife, various odd things, and my fashion headquarters had this dandy one. I was even already in the check-out line when it 'dawned' on me that I could certainly jazzzzzzzz it up a bit with a little paint. So I ran back to isle #12044 in the land of crafts and grabbed squirt paint. Today was a beautiful, sunny,...

Who is from Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, United States and what goes on there? I thought it was a part of India, but why does PacBell have United States after the district's name? According to Wikipedia: Hyderabad , the capital of Andhra Pradesh, is the fifth largest cosmopolitan city in India, rich in culture, enduring history and industrial growth. It is unique in being one of the few cities where tradition and technology co-exist. Hyderabad , like Bangalore , has become a center for outsourcing . Notable amongst the multinational companies in Hyderabad are Microsoft , Google, Bank of America , Intergraph and Oracle. Can YOU tell us more about this place?

Left Brain-Right Brain On Wed when I went to Mobile, I went to the hands-on fun science museum called The Explorium. I had long wanted to go there. My scientific friend Keith and I got there late afternoon so there were no kid's school groups there and it was basically our playground for about an hour and half. That place is GREAT ! They have Imax, but we didn't do that. One little exhibit item was especially fascinating to me. It had a mirror and a brass plate with a star engraved into it. The idea is to trace the star w/ a wired stylus while looking into the mirror. Your line of direct sight is blocked. The thing is wired like the game 'Operation' so that a buzzer goes off when you veer from the path. I am right handed, so I might have expected to be more adept in acomplishing the task w/ my right hand--but no--amazingly, I did so-so w/ right hand and even got to a turn in the path where it seemed impossible to make my hand push the stylus in the correct direction. On...

Be sure to click the photos here to see the BIG version. I saw this Scion parked on the sidewalk in front of the EXPLOREUM in Mobile this week. Car belongs to an employee of the hands-on fun museum. Maybe she is the director, but seems if you make your car cool enuf you can park where you please. Sidewalks are public property aren't they? I didn't mind walking around it, that way I didn't miss seeing this highly detailed hand painted car. I have always been a great fan of Cars as Art. I mean , here is this traveling billboard, on the road every day, for all to see, why not spice things up. Everyone who knew me 'back then' knows that I had various vehicles w/ interesting add-ons....artistic embellishments.

At Thaipusam Hindu Festival in Penang The word Thaipusam comes from 'Thai', a Tamil month (equivalent to January & February) while 'Pusam' is the name of a star that is at its zenith. The festival commemorates both the birthday of Lord Murugan and his defeat of the evil demon Soorapadam with a lance, or vel. Thaipusam is a huge event for Penang's Hindus, who will celebrate with street processions, prayers, fulfilment of vows, and the breaking of coconuts. Go There--Penang Travel

Google introduced a new service. A online web page creator & free hosting for the masses. http://pages.google.com They were promptly swamped and have suspended new accounts for now. Currently the online tool produces xhtml code pages with limitations on what you can add to the page (no javascript, etc) , 100 MB storage and for now at least, no ads. Will be interesting to see what they do with this.

Where do you think Forbes thinks the most overpriced place to live in America is? Read and see.

Recently I snail mailed a piece of regular mail to an occupied New Orleans residence. We are about 3 hours away, down I-10 from N.O. Should have been overnight delivery, based on past experiences. Two day max. It took about 10 days to be delivered. EVERY aspect of life in N.O. is obviously changed. Talk about Snail Mail.

cyberchondriacs - people who are spending all their time researching diseases they believe they have. They go to their doctors armed with information - and are told they're perfectly healthy. Then, they get back online and go doctor shopping for another doctor, since they believe the original one must be wrong.

Interesting article on a Tech reporting site. "We were just discussing the many reasons why mobile porn might not really catch on (the main one being that TV and internet porn caught on because they let otherwise embarrassed people enjoy the porn in the privacy of their own homes, while mobile takes it out into the world, where it may be less appealing -- not to even mention the tiny screen). However, with a counter point come the folks at Google. With Google making a big push to move into the mobile space, the company has been looking into what people are searching for on their mobile phones. Turns out, indeed, it's all about sex. Mobile phone searchers are much more likely to be hunting down porn than desktop surfers. In fact, 20% of all mobile search queries are for adult content vs. 8.5% on the desktop (which, by the way, inadvertently lets slip the percentage of porn searches on Google that Larry Page tried not to reveal to Time Magazine just recently). The Googlers' ...

"The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more." - Ed Parker

House Fly Fred Astaire She has a better camera than I do. Probably more patience too. See her cool photos

Typical of the attitude we run into down here when these 'delightful' folks from the northern territory show up for winter... some restaurant owners (not the waitresses or waiters) or condo rental companies might tell you they like them,,,, they lie .....one tried his best to smash my car today, he looked 90 yrs old, never looked behind him to change lanes... read on... Judith loses her camera , and it is found but not returned. I got a call from an excited park ranger in Hawaii that "a nice Canadian couple reported that they found your camera!" She gave me their name and number, and I eagerly called to reclaim my camera. "Hello," I said, when I reached the woman who had reported the camera found, "I got your number from the park ranger, it seems you have my camera?" We discussed the specifics of the camera, the brown pouch it was in, the spare battery and memory card, the yellow rubberband around the camera. It was clear it was my camera, and I w...

Have the Punjabi people not noticed that females are superior in so many ways :o) Punjab, India has the worst sex ratio in the country. Female foeticide is at an alarming high. The worst culprits are the affluent. Dhanduha's register shows that of the seven babies born in the last six months, there were six boys and just one girl. In the last one year, against 12 boys only three girls were born

Benford's Law describes a curious phenomenon about the counterintuitive distribution of numbers in sets of non-random data: A phenomenological law also called the first digit law, first digit phenomenon, or leading digit phenomenon. Benford's law states that in listings, tables of statistics, etc., the digit 1 tends to occur with probability ~30%, much greater than the expected 11.1% (i.e., one digit out of 9). Benford's law can be observed, for instance, by examining tables of logarithms and noting that the first pages are much more worn and smudged than later pages (Newcomb 1881). While Benford's law unquestionably applies to many situations in the real world, a satisfactory explanation has been given only recently through the work of Hill (1996). Think of Benford's Law in connection with the IRS using it to detect tax fraud. If you're cheating on your taxes, you might fill in amounts of money somewhat at random, the distribution of which would not match t...

Britain's Tower of London puts its ravens in hiding as fear of bird flue spreads Oh Please ! The six ravens at the 1,000-year-old fortress were taken inside last week as protection against the bird flu virus spreading across Europe. The Tower of London, home to ravens for 900 years, does not want to take a risk. According to legend, if the birds desert the fortress, its central White Tower will crumble and the Kingdom of England will fall. King Charles II decreed in the 17th century that there must always be six ravens at the Tower. British authorities are confident the birds are comfortable in their custom-built indoor aviaries in the medieval Upper Brick Tower. He visits at 5 a.m. daily to give them raw meat, blood-soaked biscuits and an occasional rabbit. Yuk ! When Sara and I were there in July--the ravens bit was so cliche. They clip the wing tendons of these poor birds and make them prisoners of this tourist trap. The ravens hang out looking miserable on this tiny partch of g...

TONITE The second installment of the Little Zoo that Could . Hurricane Dennis and Katrina evacuations tonite. Last week was first episode--Ivan. Ch you local listings, comes on at 8 pm here I think--central, and 9 pm eastern. Animal Planet Cable Channel. 13 part series.

Well, seems we are into the roll-out of a Google SERPS shuffle, and my pages are doing fine. Always scary. I have not had time to ck many of my targeted search terms, but two I did ck and they're great. For one particular type of lighting fixture, a two word search phrase, there are aprox million and half results and I hold positions number 3 & 4. Funny thing is that the pages in positions 1 & 2 concern, not a lighting fixture but a sex position by the same name....and that info is on the page description shown, so that means I am pretty much number one and two for folks who are not searching for the intimate contortionist instructions. And for a two word term for a type of modern furniture, i hold position number 2 out of about 22 million results. So no complaining here. My overall page rank may have dropped a notch for one important site, but it does not seem to have effected my SERPS Off to Mobile today to have some fun.

For anyone not doing daily Google searches or seeing the default FireFox homepage, Google is having fun doing diferent Olympic themed logos every day. Someof them I can't figure out...like today....looks like guys sliding Xmas ornaments on ice. Must be some odd Northern sport ! OK--the image name is 'Curling'. Not a sport I've ever seen around here. You can see most of the special Google logos on this one page.

Or Not... Nearly 1,000 people drawn by Internet postings and word-of-mouth converged near San Francisco's Ferry Building on Tuesday night for a half-hour outdoor pillow fight. How bazaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ..............Read More

Officials in Pensacola said middle school gym teacher, Terence Braxton, let kids skip his class if they paid him $1 a day. If he wasn't smart enuf to figure out that he'd get caught in this money making scheme, then he had no business teaching. Read the Whole Story

Vietnam man goes three decades without sleep--not once in the past 33 years. His inability to sleep has not only made him famous, but also represents a “miraculous” phenomenon worthy of scientific study. Proving his health, the elderly resident of Que Trung commune, Que Son district said he can carry two 50kg bags of fertilizer down 4km of road to return home every day. His wife said, “My husband used to sleep well, but these days, even liquor cannot put him down.” “I have tried sleeping pills and Vietnamese traditional medicine but nothing helps, even to sleep for a few minutes,” he said. Ngoc often does extra farm work or guards his farm at night to prevent theft, saying he used three months of sleepless nights to dig two large ponds to raise fish. Read more here

Painful little video --35 people getting hit in the head accidentally by balls in 32 seconds.

Measuring cup sand measuring spoons, all handcrafted. Beehive Kitchenware

All inspired by Converse tennis shoes. ConverseGallery Nice with a cup of coffee, early in the morning while you ae still waking up...my favorite is 'DOGS'

My goal here is to tell you about the really good stuff in addition to letting my cousins and loved ones know what I am up to (sorta).....well, that precious friend Barbara Taylor gave me something great for Xmas. Have to share the info about it. Barbara gave me a whole collection of house cleaning products from Caldrea . I had never heard of them before. What it is, is household cleaning agents in all natural ingredients and the most wonderful smell imaginable. Those who know me well, know that I can't handle cheap smelly stuff. That includes most scented candles. Even the pricey ones from gift shops. I am just sensitive to them....get headaches from them or just plain hate them. It took me 7 years to find a perfume I could handle after the original Norel was taken off the market after his death. Ok--back to Caldrea : Barbara gave me all sorts of stuff in a fragrance called "Pineapple Nutmeg" (might be seasonal--not on site now except on Sale Area) . Nice earthy, non-...

Sho makes me glad I don't live up north. All those stories about ice and snow and power outages. I can live without electricity--but not when I am cold and or in a place w/ out woodburning stove. A little cooler here than it has been, but now sunny and in the 50's. With my all window house, I am real tuned into the weather--but then I suppose everyone is no matter where they are. Was suppose to go to Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge & take bikes yest w/ extremely knowledgeable friend nature enthusiast Keith, but yest was rainy and cold so we rescheduled for Wed. Keith knows birds, all of them. And I want to add some birdwatching info to my site about Gulf Shores. It is big business here--people come from all over and there is this thing called The Alabama Birding Trail. I have really been enjoying the three magazines that sister, Cary, picked up for me in Munich a week or so ago. Italian and one French home decor and architecture magazines. They are the big, heavy types, one is ...

Here's a good one: "The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan And I am pretty politically ignorant.

I know that I do not even know how to use features that my simple freebie phone already has, so I may have take a continuing ed class on using my phone one of these days. Toshiba has developed a mobile phone technology that scans product bar codes and collects an overall product rating based on what the blogs have to say about it. The technology is a mobile buzz barometer that can search for up to 100 product reviews on weblogs, calculate an overall mood (positive or negative), and shoot back the results in about 10 seconds. I imagine that blog spam attempting to skew results will crank up full force.

I am on laptop on wireless....and I am actually sitting on the floor with the laptop in my lap. A true laptop. Heather is here at new office w/ me and we are installing software on the desktop to use here. So many updates to install whenever you have reformatted a computer and are adding biggie software. And wouldn't you know it--it is a beach day--i'd rather be lying on the beach reading one for the books I got for Xmas, but at same time, I am glad to be getting this together. Soooooo much going on....my head is spinning. Last nite I watched the Animal Planet show they taped in Gulf Shores about our little Zoo and the Hurricane Ivan evacuation, it is a 13 part series !! I have not watched Animal Planet before and every one i know who does is over 70, but what I have heard is that the hope is that the series will generate support amongst animal lovers for our tiny little hard-hit zoo. And while I am watching that I get a phone call to say that I am on another cable channel at s...

Los Angeles ommercial photographer Edward Carreon does location photography for corporate, advertising, and editorial clients. Worth a look. Be sure to ck Photojournalism Editorial Personal

Here are some fine examples of architecture to grab your attention. The Dancing House is in Poland, designed by a Calif chap---reckon he did any drugs while an undergrad? Don't know where the pink roof house is located. Maybe Kansas. See more

Dogs have trouble with the radio dial? Laurel Canyon Animal Company asked renowned animal "medium" Dr. Kim Ogden-- who has appeared on national TV, including CNN, Fox News, and "ABC World News Tonight"--to query dogs as to music preferences. She "surveyed" 200 dogs around the country and the results were used to create "Songs to Make Dogs Happy," a compilation of 12 songs that Dr. Ogden says are their musical favorites.

I am typing this from the new office !! Gulftel finally called and I met them over here and I am HOOKED UP !! I got a belkin wireless router at W-M and a wireless card for my laptop. I don't know to much about this stuff and I am easily confused, but I am hoping that I have what I need to get laptop to pickup DSL here and also work in wireless hotspots when I travel.

I saw on WebMasterWorld that a update called BigDaddy has begun. It is live on three Google datacenters. 216.239.51.104 66.249.93.104 64.233.179.104 If you had a website to ck the rank on, you can put the ip address directly into your browser address bar and do a search and see if you are up/down/off the map. My heart always races when they do an update....it can mean everything webbish to me. So far so good. My scrapbook site has slipped to position 3 for my prime keyword combo. That is OK--top three is fine. I didn't see a lot of movement in a few other sites position I checked. This is a very good thing, as I have had very high rank on most pages for 3 months. Just checked the 4 word combo: gulf shores real estate and I have position 3. Again--that is jes fine. So maybe I'll have another good couple of months. Life in the search lane can be a real roller coaster ride.

One of my favorites, ZeFrank sent me a little notice that he had a new small video on his site. I think the Z stands for Zany. If you like zany, have a look at his little piece about a non-profit organization. Watch till the end and you'll learn what PSB stands for. http://www.zefrank.com/psbi/

Friend, Nancy has sent me some photos...thought I'd share.

Small way you can help out the guys over in New Orleans, ...you drink coffee, right? Order some of the high quality stuff from one of the businesses that was hard hit by Katrina. I ordered my Mom and Daddy a couple of pounds. They offer a huge variety of coffees from all over the world and in whatever grind you want or beans. OrleansCoffee.com Plus you get to see a really nice website.

Super Great Weekend ! Weather is very sunny and pretty but chilly. SOME people seem to LIKE it ! Me, I'll take about 20 degrees higher, thank you very much. Happy to report that I successfully repaired my friend's refrigerator door shelves thanks to knowing about a strong glue a guy-who-can-fix-things told me about----JB Weld Epoxy. Good stuff, and sandable after it hardens. I got mine at Home Depot, so it is easy to find. Ted sent photos of an awesome DAC-ART Chateau nearing completion in TN. Click link to see the details on this nice house. Hope you have broadband, as Ted uploaded HUGE photos. The color of this house is probably close to the color my new blocks will be to build the addition. Not pinkish like my current place. But, hey, that is ok, as it will just look like the stone came out of the quarry in a different century. If you have ever been to Europe, you'd be familiar with buildings constructed from various materials from different eras. I have a bunch of web...

Cigar Box banjo --cost $120. With a cedar cigar box body, hand-carved fretless hardwood neck and a real ham bone nut, these folk instruments date back to the early 1800's. The same site offers coffins too.

Canadian researchers are finding evidence that the high-speed, multitasking of the young and wireless can help protect their brains from aging. A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, scores were higher.

Police arrested a man Thursday accused of breaking into three Washington County, Wisconsin homes and making himself at home by brewing coffee, eating meals and taking showers. The burglar left his Yahoo! account open after checking his personal e-mail on a computer. He never logged out. The suspect had escaped from the Drug Abuse Correctional Center north of Oshkosh last week. I am not making this up !

Finally got the bathroom chandelier assembled, and hung to a nice height. The pre-wired center post wiring was just not quite long enuf, so I had to take it down and splice in an extension. I added that info to the web page I made about putting one together. As far as I know, there is nothing on the web to help a purchaser with the assembly and the included sketchy instructions are often in Italian only. The light looks good in the bathroom now. The colors are good with the glass mosaic tiles in the shower. My sister Cary and I were discussing these Venetian chandeliers and both agreed that for the cost, they provide more sparkle and fun than jewelry, don't get lost, are unlikely to get stolen...and therefore a GREAT purchase !

First Google brought us Google Local and Google Earth . Then Microsoft followed suit with Windows Live Local , featuring stunning new imagery. Bird's Eye images provide a high-resolution, low-angle aerial view of a small area. Find cool stuff and see if they'll add it. I swear---I could play on the web all day ! PS---well, seems they don't have color or very up-to-date shots of my area. My house was not built when this photo was taken. Guess we don't 'rate'... but that's Ok--less chance of maniac foreign terrorist attack. My electrician doesn't know that tho--he has pulled in the driveway and shown me the 3 guns he totes to be ready for any invasion.

Ever remember seening something on the web, and poof it is gone? For those of you who do not know, the Wayback Machine is the Internet's largest one-stop permanent web archive of web pages that have existed and it's a very important tool for all web researchers. Material in The Wayback Machine dates back to 1996. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has increased in size 15 billion pages today from 40 billion pages to 55 billion archived web pages. I see too that the home page has gotten a lot fancier lately. You can go to the Wayback Machine directly and search, or also find direct links to The Wayback Machine from search engine Gigablast (look for the "Older Copies" link) next to each snippet and Yahoo. Look for The Wayback Machine link in the top box when reviewing a page found in the Yahoo cache. Also find direct links to The Wayback Machine via Alexa.com . On a results page, click the "Site Info" link and then look for The Wayback Machine link...

Nobody has totaled it up, but the business of disposing of or reselling items banned by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration appears to be valued in the millions of dollars a year. A 39-pound box containing 500 Swiss Army knives sold on eBay in 2004 for $595 to a California buyer Read More

Well, I know you will ALL be glad to know that my old toenail has finally come off and a new one is growing in nicely. Meanwhile, I have painted and trimmed to fit, a Lee Press-on Nail to wear on my poor disfigured looking toe so that people don't stare. Look at the difference !! (No Nail photo has wet foot with some soap bubbles on it--those are not warts !!!)

Wal-Mart goes high fashion. These stools are look-alike knock-offs of the world famous Italian Bombo barstool. I bought them at $49 each. What do the originals cost you wonder? Try regular price $520, on sale this month for $395. Now it is true that W-M only had black, not the blues, reds and greens that you can get from Italy---but something tells me that the Italian ones have a big mark-up. These barstools have hydrolic piston for adjustable height just like the originals. I don't doubt that the Original Bombo barstools have heavier bases or are more substantial, but at this great price, these will be fun till they wear out.

A while back, before he died, Miller and I had gone halvzies on a VW Thing. It was gonna be his car down here for when he flew in. We knew it needed some work and he had done a lot of research on Things and ordered some parts. I had a Thing when he was a little kid and he and I were both 'of a mind' that they were way cool. I decided to go ahead and have it repaired. Gary Norman of Gary's Garage, right down the street was recommended to me and it turns out that Gary is Heather's (my web helper) Dad. So, in a super secret stealth location, guarded by a fierce cocker spaniel looking doggie and hidden by trees and long driveway, Gary is doing a great job making my little Thing a fun summer car. He has it completely re-wired (no speedometer maybe--who needs it ?--I know how fast I am going), he is rebuilding the seats w/ new covers, putting on the new top. I have to order a few more parts--new gas tank, some top parts, and get a new battery. Then he'll crank it up and s...