The New Desk

Well, I hope it will be the new desk, anyway! Someone on Craigslist is selling this red, metal kid's desk for $25. BARGAIN!! Especially seeing as it should fit beautifully in a room decorated with an outer space theme!

So I just winged off an email hoping to nab it before next week. There are lots of kid's desks for sale, but most of them are old school desks that nobody wants. Yeech.

I actually brushed the cats tonight. No small feat, considering how furry they all are. I decided to brush Addison since he seems to have this intestinal blockage thing going all the time. The less he ingests, the better, IMO. So I started to brush him, and of course this drew Paige like a magnet, and then Sasha was jealous that HE wasn't getting the attention like the others were. Sigh. I also took advantage and attacked Paige with a pair of scissors to get all those horrible mats out of her fur. I'm pretty impressed with how many came out, she feels like a new cat! I ended up with a giant fistful of fur from all three of the cats, and then had to vacuum the floor and immediately put my clothes in the laundry. Doug will probably have to take a Claritin to get any sleep tonight, as the cat fur will drive his allergies crazy. On the upside, if I keep the cats brushed for once, this might have an long-term improvement on his allergies.

File this under "Cool Stuff." This is blurb.com, a site that lets you create your own books. Like real, printed books...and offer them for sale on the site's bookstore if you want to. In fact, you can get a hard-back, full-color, 440-page book with a custom dust jacket printed up for $80. (Add another $10 for shipping.) Little-bitty 40 page books can be done for about $20. If it weren't nearly midnight, I'd place a call to Susan....

And the ultimate in cool right now has to be the new iPhone.

C'mon, admit it, this is a sexy piece of technology! This thing doesn't even look like a cell phone! Hold it upright, and it's an iPod. Turn it sideways, and you can watch widescreen videos of either movies that you download, or the last episode of Grey's Anatomy/Boston Legal that you missed...you name it. With better clarity and crispness than you can get on your computer screen.

It's a cell phone...it does automatic three-way calling, lets you call up names just by pointing at them (no stylus), automatically synchs up with your computer (PC or Mac), and you can select and listen to voicemail messages in whatever order you want, so you can get back to your most important calls first. It does email and text messaging...there's no little keypad (like the one on my Palm Treo), it's built into the touch screen. (Which, I might add, manages to ignore unintentional taps.)

It shows photos. OK, it does more, it will also zoom in on photos, rotate them, email them to your contacts of choice. Oh, and did I mention that it's a camera, too? Oh...and to rotate the photo? Just turn the phone sideways. "iPhone’s accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display, so you immediately see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio."

It's a web-browser. Well, so is my Treo. But the iPhone allows you to zoom in on webpages, rotate them, get in close to the things you want to see. It synchs up your bookmarks. It does email, it handles photo attachments easily (shows up right in the body of the message itself). It works on its own network or over WiFi.

It does maps. The site demo shows tapping in "San Francisco." It pinpoints the city. Type "Starbucks." The phone immediately pops up with the nearest 20 Starbucks. Hit "List" and all the addresses and phone numbers for the places show up. Touch one and it places the call. You can also get traffic information and directions from the iPhone.

It has Widgets...and if you haven't experienced an Apple Widget, it's really hard to explain. You should just trust me in saying that they're exceedingly useful.

OK. I've prattled enough. Go see it. It's not available until this summer, and only on Cingular. I'm giving it some serious consideration.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/