A good girl-friend and ex-coworker, lilhlfpint shared this with me:

"Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it's a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann was an attorney turned philosopher-poet who lived in Terre Haute, Ind. He spent his life wrestling with the realities of making a living and following his personal calling to a life of poetry, literature, and thought. He wrote A Prayer, which became a message of hope for thousands, but he is best known for Desiderata, which he wrote for himself, "because it counsels those virtues I felt myself most in need of." Max included this work as part of a personal Christmas greeting in 1933, and Desiderata's power and appeal have continued to reach out to and significantly affect readers ever since. He died in 1945. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - lil 1/2 pint... "all men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from and why" james thurber

blogging from my tungsten c on the itty bitty qwerty. waiting for wireless keyboard order for this thing to come in.

--bustagroove was here--

The fire crisis has ended. It is now raining outside. Last night I was able to see snow on the peaks of the mountains that are about 10 miles away. It has cooled down quite a bit from the 90+ degree weather we were having a few weeks ago.

Hubby and I spent the holiday by going to mall to buy his birthday gift -- much needed shoes, did some looking around for Christmas gift ideas (Playstation 2 comes to mind) for the girls, got scheduled maintenance on my Odyssey and hubby got major work ($1K) done on his Tahoe. I've been toying with the idea of getting satellite radio, but for $10/month don't know if it's worth it.

We're also thinking of jumping the DirecTV ship and stowing away onto DISH network. In the next few weeks, DISH is supposed to have HDTV DVR promotion where they'll "give" you HDTV DVR for free in addition to standalone DVRs..at least that's what the salesperson said. I haven't seen anything on DISH's website about this upcoming promotion. Need to find DISH community forums for further research.

I'm oncall this week and will be spending at least 6-8 hours doing server upgrade Saturday night from home (hopefully) over VPN. Usually, when it starts raining the DSL connectivity starts dropping. Hubby has high school band competitions for the next two Saturdays and then will be gearing up for high school basketball season which is much less intense = not as many after-school rehearsals. Football team is going to playoffs and tied with visitor team at Homecoming last week.

Did my AOL Mail hiccup???, if not it's another welcome surprise ;) I think it's odd that the Sidekick is the "official" device that replaced the AOL Communicator but I can't access any of my entries on the site because once again....javascript is not supported.

--bustagroove was here--

foremank, it's disapponting to hear that Matrix: Revolutions is a dud compared to the original Matrix. There wasn't nearly the amount of buzz/advertisement when compared to Matrix: Reloaded. So it looks like waiting til the weekend to see the Matrix: Revolutions is not a big deal. I've been waiting for the original Matrix to be shown on DirecTV, but it hasn't in the past few months. The second in the trilogy "Matrix: Reloaded" suffered from too much dialogue...SaxyHC didn't like it and fell asleep (not unusual for him) during the movie. Maybe buying Finding Nemo DVD will help cushion the letdown.

The Napster creator is acting as for movie based on his creation of Napster and the behhind the scenes type stuff when Napster was at its' peak. He had a cameo role in The Italian Job where there was a running gag that he/Napster creator stole the idea for Napster from a napping computer programmer, hence the name Napster, just some more trivia.

Just upgraded firmware for 802.11b/g wireless router and 802.11b/g card to deliver 108Mbps bandwidth in 2.4GHz freq range. New upgrade firmware for D-Link Xtreme G was free (it's about time).... Noticeable improvement in page loading when browsing web, etc. The "downside" is that when legacy devices (Tungsten C or SaxyHC's laptop) access the router, router speed will throttle down to "normal" 54Mbps. I ran speed test dslreports after firmware upgrade ... download in "rocks" range and upload in "bearable" range -- which moves me to max level of Verizon's "advertised" upload/download, 0% latency loss from line quality tests. My older tests dslreports are gone so no benchmark reference.

--bustagroove was here--

....here we goooooooooooooo............

Looks like our team is now complete with 4 members. Getting our game plan together. Hopefully, it won't have to be re-done drastically as mikepop indicated that there are going to be a few curves thrown in when he posts "THE LIST". I can't imagine how it could more interesting than last year, but then again that's the F-U-N of it :) and the teams are smaller, too.

Thanks for checking in....wes_chyrchel. Our house is still standing. A bunch of smoke, ash and overall unhealthy air and some stress is what we have had for the past few days. The Grand Prix fire started approximately 12 miles away from our home. My coworkers' parents live in Yucaipa and last I heard they were under "voluntary evacuation" and have already packed.

Here are some statistics of the Grand Prix Fire as of 6:53 pm today: Latitude:34° 9´ 30" Longitude:117° 30´ 48" Fire origin was on Foxborough Drive, Fontana.

35 % containment. Expected containment date is 10-31-03 2 cars destroyed Structures Destroyed: 50 Homes, 48 Outbuilding Structures Damaged: 40 Homes 1 Helicopter on USFS contract sustained significant damage while on the ground and overrun by fire (no one was injured) 1 boat on trailer 4 cars damaged

Mandatory Evacuations: Glen Helen - North Side of I-15 Cajon Canyon towards Blue Cut Devore and Devore Heights - all the way up Mt. Baldy Village Lytle Creek

Evacuations have been lifted: All of Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto in Los Colinas and County Club, San Antonio Heights, Cucamonga and Upland Area

There's an "ARSON WANTED" poster posted at IncidentControl.com

The fire is burning in an area that has heavy brush and timber and is steep, rugged and inaccessible. The work the firefighters are doing is in very difficult and dangerous terrain. Major power transmission lines are a concern on this fire because both the DWP and SCE have lines that run through the fire area. There are about three of these lines and while the utilities could probably handle the loss of one of the circuits, loss or shut down of more than one could mean power outages for a million customers. Including the San Bernardino Air Tanker Base that is needed to fight the current fires.

The fire was named Grand Prix because the initial dispatch was to Grand Prix and Shetland Lane in Fontana.

--bustagroove IS STILL here--

Well, it arrived this afternoon...the Tungsten C.... This is the first time I've used a Palm device. I've installed some apps but I need to take a trip to the 2nd floor of the ETILab where the CISCO WiFi access point is located to set up WiFi/VPN. The next hurdle will be to configure PIM synch services with (IBM) WebSphere Everyplace Access (server). We're in the "proof of concept" phase for mobile employees access to productivity data and enterprise applications from pervasive devices such as PDAs & smartphones, all from a single platform.

As expected the keys on the Tungsten C are tiny, so I'm still waiting for the Palm wireless keyboard to come in.