Life in Digital Format

Current Mood: cheerful & creative & productive

http://www.djness.net/shop-my-etsy-store/

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current Mood: shocked & sympathetic

I just read a really interesting article today, so interesting in fact that I am listening to my favorite talk show hosts cover it right now on 92.3 FM KTAR (Mac and Gaydos!)…

Basically, a 13 yr old boy has been deemed by his doctors terminally ill with cancer, and it is likely he will die if he doesnt have it and not die if he does.  Well most people would probably go ahead and do it, right? That would be my first instinct as a parent but I follow no faith that forbids me from medical procedures that could harm the body.  His parents however, do.

Here is a link to the story…(click) 

This is really hard for me, I cannot BELIEVE that anyone would pick their religion over their child living or dying.  The story says they want to get an “alternative treatment” instead after recieving one chemotherapy treatment.  But I don’t like the idea of the government telling us how to treat our kids.  This is a life or death situation, but gosh in reality it could go further than this.

And this folks, is an example of why I hate politics and parties, and choosing whether i am conservative, liberal, etc.  I can always see both sides and HATE making decisions.  For me, I would do what has proven to work for many, many people.  Hope the poor child heals 100%!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current Mood: amused & confused

My sister is graduating from Arizona State University this week, and it’s a big deal all over town that President Barack Obama is speaking at their commencement tonight.  I had the opportunity to go, but passed it up last minute.  Would have had to arrange a sitter and sit in the stadium for 4 hours in 100 degree heat, mind you!  On top of traffic and security, it just wasn’t sounding like the most fun thing to do today.  Would have liked the experience if it was a little easier to obtain…

It is also big news that ASU is not giving President Obama an honorary degree.  I thought this sounded pretty ungrateful, myself!  Their excuse was that Obama hasn’t been in office long enough to prove himself and earn one.  Really?  The first black american predisent, the freshest face of ideas since John F Kennedy?  Wow, what a burn.

Well my MOST favorite talk show host, Jon Stewart, did a great piece last night on the Daily Show about who HAS gotten an honorary degree from this “prestigious” (LOL) college…(and the student interviews are hilarious, you know how they do!):

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current Mood: irate & cynical

Now this is something I would absolutely HATE to see happen folks.  As some may know, my hubby and I have both been light smokers for 1/2 our lives.  Yeah, we know its bad for us and that’s why we were OVERLY elated when we found a product called an electronic cigarette.  It is a nicotine delivery system identical to smoking a cigarette, yet it uses an atomizer that vaporizes propylene glycol with (or without) nicotine, water and flavor.

In my personal opinion, this product is nothing short of amazing.  Yes, some cartridges for the device contain nicotine but many are available without.  Vapor and not smoke is the byproduct, which makes them virtually odorless and non-toxic to the air we breathe.  They contain no tobacco and no carcinogens.  The essential device in an electronic cigarette that makes this possible is a battery powered atomizer, so it is about as clean as inhaling something can get!I personally love the strawberry and vanilla cartridges, and prefer the nicotine-free ones.  I am lucky that i live in Phoenix, Arizona since this is where the corporate offices of the NJOY Npro operate.  We found that this was the highest rated device for the price, and my hubby and I both got one last month.  I got a custom silver battery with a blue light for the “cherry” and my hubby got one that looks like a traditional cigarette.

here are some pics, you can click them for larger images:

So the rumor is, a man by the name of Bill Godshall of Smokefree Pennsylvania has sent out a mass email stating the FDA is going to start putting the pressure on 3 major distributors starting Tuesday May 5th.  THIS CANNOT HAPPEN!  THERE IS FINALLY A PRODUCT OUT THERE THAT COULD SAVE TENS UPON THOUSANDS OF LIVES and the FDA wants to ban it?  This is not the first time rumors of this action have surfaced, but its getting all too real and close.

The rest of this poorly formatted post is from Reason.com :

Bill Godshall of Smokefree Pennsylvania reports in a mass email message that the Food and Drug Administration plans to proceed with a ban on electronic cigarettes, devices that deliver nicotine vapor without tobacco or combustion products. Godshall reproduces the following message from Heather Zawalick of the FDA’s Office of Legislation, which says the agency will announce enforcement actions against the three largest e-cigarette distributors on Tuesday:

Subject/Headline: FDA Takes Enforcement Action on Electronic Smoking Products

Planned Release Date: May 5

Driving Event: Compliance action

Rollout Plan: Extensive rollout planned including press conference at HHS, press release, fact sheet, video for upload to YouTube, podcast, consumer article, consumer Q &A, key message points, internal media Q & A, Op-Ed, photos of products for posting on Internet.

Other background, hidden factors: Action involves three largest distributors. One of the distributors has just sued FDA seeking a restraining order to prevent us from holding their product at the border.

There is keen interest in this subject. E-cigarette kiosks are all over town, including Montgomery Mall. They’re being advertised as a safer alternative to cigarettes. Our concern is that this might introduce nonusers to nicotine use. This is a drug delivery device. The content of the products have not been analyzed by FDA. To be sold, they would have to be approved by the agency.

Our concern is that this might introduce nonusers to nicotine use. And what if it did? Separated from the dangers of smoking, nicotine use is not a big health concern. The FDA itself has approved various nicotine replacement products (gum, patches, even an inhaler), some of them for over-the-counter sale, even though they theoretically might “introduce nonusers to nicotine use.” That possibility is an incredibly lame justification for preventing smokers from switching to a product that eliminates virtually all the risks associated with standard cigarettes.

In an open letter to Zawalick, Joel Nitzkin of the American Association of Public Health Physicians says the pending FDA ban seems to be “based entirely on the undocumented assumption that electronic cigarettes may have the potential to attract additional teenagers to nicotine use and addiction.” That concern seems to be fanciful: Godshall says “there is no evidence that e-cigarette products have been marketed to youth, nor is there evidence of youth use of e-cigarette products (most of which cost more than $100).” In any case, Nitzkin notes, the government can impose age restrictions without stopping “current adult smokers who are unwilling or unable to quit” from enjoying “the health benefits this product can offer.” By Nitzkin’s reckoning, based on the available research, smokeless nicotine products “promise a risk of illness and death well under 1% of the risk posed by cigarettes.”

In his own letter to Zawalick, Godshall argues that “denying 45 million cigarette smokers access to exponentially less hazardous smokefree nicotine alternatives would result in millions of preventable deaths among smokers, millions of nonsmokers continuing to be exposed to tobacco smoke pollution, and tens of thousands of e-cigarettes users reverting back to smoking cigarettes.” He adds that ”it is absurd for the FDA to even contemplate protecting the deadliest nicotine products (cigarettes) from market competition by the least hazardous nicotine products.”

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I am a huge quote lover, and I can get quite nerdy about it.  I even sometimes comment on my friends Facebook status with quotes, which was what I was doing tonight when I came across a great one by Charles Dickens:

““There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.” — Charles Dickens

This prompted me to search for some other good vs. evil themed quotes that I just thought I’d share.  They are kinda fitting with all thats going down these days, i think as humans we all encounter that struggle in our lives, no matter what our beliefs.  So here we go!

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”  –  Plato 

“Ignorance, the root and the stem of every evil.” –  Plato    

“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.” – William Shakespeare 

“When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.” – Mae West 

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current Mood: excited & impressed

I’m sure you’ve already heard about the long awaited Safari 4.0 Browser being released recently, but I just wanted to share how in love I am with it after 20 minutes of using it.  It is just super fast and has a sleek look to it.  My favorite feature so far is how you can view, edit and surf your Top Sites at a glance.

Here is a screenshot I took this am:

And for PC users, sorry but I believe it is Mac only.  Below is a link to where you can download it if you want to try it. It’s super easy to report bugs and whatnot by clicking on the little spider next to your search bar (which i think is just too cute).  And they are NOT kidding when they say its the world’s fastest browser.  I heard its 40x faster than Google Chrome but I can’t remember where from!

Safari 4.0 Internet Browser for Macs BETA 

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current Mood: hopeful & impressed

 Well, we all know our new president Barack Obama made a lot of statements about what he wants to do for his country. Little did we know that the folks at PolitiFact.com were tracking it, and they have compiled over 500 so far.  And I must say, so far so good!  Really they refer to it as the Truth-o-meter (I like my name better however).  He has already officially kept 5 promises and has 17 in the works.  One promise is chalked up to a compromise (on lobbyist reform) and so far, none have been broken.  Not too bad for the first week in office :) Here is a link to the RSS feed for these updates.I must mention I have a slight case of what they call Obama-mania, or Obamania.  Yes, I think our president has really been putting in a serious effort to change American politics.  If you haven’t checked out the White House’s website since the transfer of power last week, I highly reccomend you do.  What you will find is simply refreshing, complete with a blog and weekley video update from The Prez himself.  I am impressed by the openness and honesty of the new administration, so far.  His new stimulus plan for our faltering economy is intereseting however, and I will be keeping a close eye to see how this all plans out.   For now, kudos to our new President, Barack Obama!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current Mood: nostalgic

I just love this article i read, and it really rings pretty true! If you’ve ever worked in ANY customer service environment really, it is true

from The Cranking Widgets Blog

“We’ve all been there. Something’s dreadfully wrong with your trusty computer - you can’t print, you can’t get on the web, you can’t play Bejeweled. For whatever reason, the problem is major enough to warrant one of the most desperate acts you can imagine - a phone call to tech support…”

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current Mood: geeky

I saw this video @ GEEKOLOGIE.com(Geek & Technology). It is by far one of my favorite sites on the internet, along with sister sites The SUPERFICIAL.com (celebrity gossip) and IWATCHSTUFF.com (Movies/Television). Whoever the writer(s) are of this site have some pretty great commentary, tongue-in-cheek yet still suitable for work (as long as no one is looking over you shoulder, they curse a bit and stuff sometimes).

Anyway, if you’re a nerd like me and you enjoy old school video games and just weird stuff in general, check out this Game Over Stop Animation Video.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Current Mood: enthralled & giggly & nostalgic

NOFX : Backstage Passport
NOFX Backstage Passport Premieres 4/15 on Fuse - The funniest home videos are hereHELL YES!!!! Above is a preview for NOFX new show starting in April on FUSE TV. Its eight episodes and depicts their most recent tour which if you’ve been following, has been all over the world and back. I cannot WAIT until this starts. Here’s my official reminder to set my DVR in April!From NOFX’s MySpace Blog:

Thursday, March 06, 2008NOFX : BACKSTAGE PASSPORTFuse TV is going to be airing a documentary series on NOFX starting on April 15th at 10pm EST. Here is a statement from the band…So we got the bright idea to take two camera dudes on this sketchy tour we booked and make a documentary. We went to Singapore, Peru, Israel, South Africa, Korea; you get the idea…countries where maybe punk music isn’t too popular.After a few weeks we realized there’s way too much semi-interesting, sorta funny, kind of embarrassing stuff going on. How are we gonna fit all this on a DVD? So we thought maybe TV? Nah, that’s never gonna happen—we’re not nearly as funny as Travis Barker. But we made a little trailer anyhow and showed it to some of our friends at Fuse. They loved it and showed it to some of their bosses. Their bosses didn’t get it at all and told us they would call. We knew what that meant, so it was back to the DVD idea.We kept the camera dudes on tour with us for the next year and some pretty cool stuff happened. Well…not cool for us, but cool for the DVD. Stuff like not getting paid, cops shutting down shows, Muslims getting pissed at us, Jews getting pissed at us, scoring the wrong drugs, getting beat up by Japanese women in latex, getting beat up by a Russian man in a pointy hat and basically having a super great time.We finished the tour in South Africa and came home. We figured we might as well show it to the Fuse people again. (We showed it to HBO too, and they told us that maybe if we were U2 they would consider it…diss.) By this time Fuse had hired new people and the new folks loved it. They said they wanted to make it into a documentary series. Coolage! We signed the papers and now we have a TV show.After months and months of editing and fighting amongst ourselves, we have 8 episodes of a show, but after you account for commercials it’s only about the length of a really long movie. Think Titanic meets Spinal Tap. NOFX never had a video on MTV, but now we have a documentary on TV. Weird how things work out. Anyhow, it comes out in April sometime. My neighbors are never going to speak to me again.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites