What is the proper response to that? A client who I had not seen in over a year said that to me 7 times in the span of a half hour. I did not reply when she said it. I think she may have said it extra times because I failed to reciprocate or reply in any way.

This is my latest obsession:


I'm working on a variation with a soccer ball because I have one, but I don't have the acrylic ball that is typically used.

I haven't had an analog addiction in a long time.

I bought an electric skillet yesterday. As I was walking home with it, a girl gasped and excitedly shouted "Home Shopping Network". I didn't buy it from there, but she had no way of knowing that. This incident reminded me of my own addiction to watching HSN.

I discovered the Home Shopping Network at an electronics store in Chinatown. It was a small store and didn't even have cable internet to show off their televisions. I noticed that one of them was on channel 68. This greatly amused me, because I was not aware of the existence of this channel. I spent several weeks watching only this before I forced myself to stop. I never bought anything from them, but that was only because I knew that I would become bankrupt from buying stuff that I didn't need.

I still watch occasionally, but it's not as mesmerizing anymore.

A client asked me to help her fill out a visa application. I was wondering why she didn't do it herself, but the reason soon became clear. https://ceac.state.gov/genniv/ is one of the most horribly designed websites I have ever seen for the following reasons:

1) It caused Internet Explorer 8 to crash several times. When I switched to Firefox 2, I got an SSL error and could not add an exception until I upgraded to Firefox 3.

2) There is a ridiculous time limit for activity. If you take too long to answer a question, the session terminates. This happened several times while answering questions at a slightly hurried pace. I don't know the exact time limit, but I estimate round 4 minutes per page. This is ridiculous for some pages.

3) There is an option to save your work to prevent total loss when time limits are exceeded, but saving can only be done after all items are filled out on a page.

4) There is an upload size limit of 240kb for the photo and the minimum photo resolution is 600x600. In my first attempt to upload, the file was 255kb. This was easy for me to remedy by changing to 90% quality, but it is ridiculous to expect the average person to understand how to do this.

My landlord's son is the property manager for my apartment. He slipped a note under my door last night stating that he had to come by today to look at my tub. I have no idea why. He was here around 7 this morning. I stayed in bed and did not check his work until I got up at 9. I didn't see any changes to my tub, but the cap on the bathroom sink's faucet had been popped off. He came back a few hours later and reinstalled the cap. I still don't see any change to the tub and I have no idea why he was making adjustments to the faucet.

I heard a loud crashing sound outside around 6:30 yesterday. Children screamed and I lost internet connection immediately after the sound. Before going out to investigate, I tried restarting my computer. When that didn't work, I checked my modem and noticed the flashing light which indicated a lack of DSL signal. When I finally went outside to check, around 10 minutes had passed since the sound. The screaming children were gone and I did not see anything fallen or damaged.

I wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or if the damage was somehow concealed. I contacted my ISP and spent 30 minutes talking to a guy in India. The test utility that he normally uses was malfunctioning. After three attempts, he decided to authorize a technician to visit me despite not having evidence on his side that there was a problem with the connection. I was told that I would get a call within 72 hours to schedule a technician to visit. Service was functioning again this morning.