Oscar Weekend [yawn]

This year I was honestly looking forward to watching the Academy Awards. This year I had watched almost all the movies that were nominated. I even tuned in extra early to watch the red carpet pre-show. I anticipated watching the Hollywood stars show off their famous fashion designer clothes. More than anything I was seeking to see those fashion flops. Surprisingly I don't recall anyone that particular stood out - in a bad way. The Oscar Awards were extremely tame overall. John Steward had mentioned he would be tame, so sad considering his sometimes controversial political views. I found Chris Rock far more offensive last year. There were no sobbing tears in the acceptance speeches. I can't believe the highlight of the speeches was the acceptance for best original song from Three 6 Mafia. I did miss an hour of the broadcast, while I stepped away from the house. According to today's entertainment headlines I didn't miss much.

The Drawings from - hethe.com

I stumbled across this site and was reminded of the drawings I use to make in high school. I had developed quite a skill and I will admit I was pretty good. I no longer draw, I don't draw anything for that matter. The other day I attempted to draw during a commute to work, and was sadden to see that my sketches were crappy. I lost that small talent I once had and loved. There is still a small trace of that raw ability to shape recognizable forms and distiguishable human figures. I simply wish it came easy to me as it once did. I know I will never be as good as this guy's website, so I must be content at admiring the wonderful drawings of others. Inspiration from: hethe.com

I've Taken Years Off of Sir Charles

Never say never - but seriously I never want to trim Charlie's fur on my own EVER again! I don't recall it being such a mess as it was this time around. Sure I had procrastinated and let his fur grow way to long, but oh my goodness! I think it took about an hour from start to finish perhaps even more. Charlie was great though, he loves the attention anyway. To him it was as if I were petting him or giving him a massage with the vibrating trimmer. I simply don't want to do it by myself again mainly because of all the fur that was left on my clothes. The outcome was nice though. Charlie even let me trim his facial fur and beard. He looks years younger. Take a look for yourself - what do you think?
Before                                After

Joke Of The Day - The Price of Barbie Dolls

One day a father gets out of work and on his way home he
remembers that it's his daughter's birthday. He pulls over to a
toy store and asks the salesperson, "How much is the Barbie on
the display window?"

The salesperson answers, "Which one? We have:
Work out Barbie for $19.95
Shopping Barbie for $19.95
Beach Barbie for $19.95
Disco Barbie for $19.95
Divorced Barbie for $265.95

The amazed father asks: "What? Why is the Divorced Barbie
£265.95 and the others only $19.95?"

The salesperson annoyingly answers:
"Sir..., "Divorced Barbie comes with:
Ken's Car,
Ken's House,
Ken's Boat,
Ken's Furniture,
Ken's Computer and...
One of Ken's Friends.

Wal-Mart Launches Online Music Service - No Thanks

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched an online music video and audio service with exclusive studio performances Wednesday, part of a broader strategy to make itself trendier and draw consumers already in the store for cheap staples into other departments.

Dubbed 'Wal-Mart Soundcheck', the service features studio performances and interviews with new and established bands and musicians, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company said in a statement. First up were punk pop fivesome Yellowcard and rock band Switchfoot.

The segments, each with four to six songs, will play for free on Walmart.com and on television screens in Wal-Mart electronics departments. There will be a viewing event in stores of the complete 30- to 40-minute performance every few weeks on Friday nights and fans can also download audio tracks from the performances for a fee from the Web site. The artist selection will cover genres including rock, pop, punk, country, hip-hop and R&B. New acts will follow monthly. | Source: Yahoo! News

This is one service I doubt I will be trying out. Remember Walmart is the retail store that has more censorship and 'banning' of many artist because of the lyrics in their music. I am frankly surprised that Yellowcard are the first out the gate with this new service. Well they are mainstream pop-punk. The service sounds very similar to 'AOL sessions' - offered to it's subscribers. Even though there are rumors that Napster may be selling it's service my response to Walmart is - No Thank you!

Whatever happened to mainstream pop? - MUSIC - MSNBC.com

"Now, suddenly, old-fashioned radio itself is threatened with extinction. From the ubiquitous MP3 players to the surging medium of satellite radio, the listener is building a virtual fortress according to his or her own tastes " | source: Whatever happened to mainstream pop? - MUSIC - MSNBC.com

So Sad but so true. I don't listen to as much radio as before. It's not like I listen to less amount of music, quite the contrary. I've always been addicted to music and practically have some form on throughout the day. I have just changed my listening source habits. Goodbye old fashion alarm clock! I have a timer setup on my TV that wakes me up to XM satelite music broadcasts. I love having the theater sound sytem wake me up each morning :) At work I tune into napster or launchcast, where I can listen to my mp3 song collection or run my customized radio station. When I come home from work, either I am in my car listening to my CDs, or I am in the train listening to my palm mp3 player. At home I have everything to chose from and only once in a great while will I choose the stardard radio stations. Actually I take that back I tune into the radio station from my shower radio player. OK I think I have given way too much information about myself.

My Alcoholoscope

Oh my Goodness!, I found this to be so true. This is my Alcoholoscope:
LEO - Drinking style
Leo likes to drink and dance -- they're often fabulous dancers, and usually pretty good drinkers as well, losing their commanding dignity and turning kittenish. Of course, they're quite aware they're darling.

Leos will be Leos, after all. They generally know their limit, probably because they loathe losing self-control. When they get over-refreshed, expect flirting to ensue - and perhaps not with the one that brought them. But Leo's not the type to break rules even when drunk, so just try to ignore it (try harder, Cancer) and expect a sheepish (and hung over) Lion to make it up to you the next day.

Read your astrology drining style @ alcoholoscopes

My Chicago Daily News Post

I have to admit I love seeing a picture that I have taken posted on another site. Not just a common site like flickr that I maintain but other sites that not only other people maintain but resgularly visit. The Chicago Chi-town Daily News is an online newspaper maintained by and by Chicago residents for Chicago residents. I was able to contribute my pictures to the website and although I admit this is out of pure vanity - I love it. You'll recognize my picture if you saw yesterday's posting on my photo-blog. It's a picture I took from a forest trail. You can visit the site at chitowndailynews.org, I look forward to contributing many more pictures in the near future.
Technorati Tags: Araceli Arroyo | celikins | Chicago | Chicago photo

Sir Charles (The Pooch) Goes On A Hike

I cannot continue to leave the Charlie picture posting in the back burner any longer now can I? For those patient Charlie fans I'd like to give you an update on your favorite furry friend. He is quite a lazy pooch these days. I don't think I've ever seen a dog want to sleep so much. Those puppy days are long gone!

We did go for a winter hike the other day though. The snowy views were beautiful, look for those postings in the photoblog. Charlie enjoys playing in the snow, although much of it has melted now. We've been 'fortunate' to have warm weather this weekend and are now left with swampy like mud mess. I hate when he pulls me into those mushy puddles - he gets quite messy as well. Charles fur is at full length now and desperate needs a trim. Come back next week I should have a new pic of him with a new look soon.
Technorati Tags: CeliPics | Araceli Arroyo | celikins | Charlie | photoblog

Happy New Year!!

I can't believe another year has passed us and a new year begins. Time flies when you're having fun, and boy was it fun last night - right? In case you missed the ball drop in Times Square and all the celebration you see a streaming broadcast on MSN - NYC New Years 2006 Broadcast.

Onto the New Year's resolutions... I don't even remember what my last year's wants were. I even looked in the good ol' blog archives and found nothing. I guess I didn't keep any or forgot to make some. Well this year I do have a major one. I look back at 2005 and although prosperous and filled with fond memories it was incredibly hectic and had too little of me going out and having fun. This year will be different, not in terms of the hectic schedule, quite the contrary on that one. I still plan to continue with my masters. My new year's resolution is to enjoy life more and make time to go out with friends and hopefully make new ones.
2006 resolutions | Araceli Arroyo | celikins

The End To My Hosting Provider Search

Last week I posted a complaint and vented my frustration with my hosting provider. My freelance site was up the next day, after a series of sporadic outages. However the instability had me ready to seek new providers. I looked at a few sites and checked out rates. Today I logged in to my service provider to check when my next billing cycle would come. Lo and behold, a new company has taken over my hosting provider.

I drilled in through the new interface, checked on some of my services and like the improvements! For an additional buck and a half the new company will guaranty 99.9% up-time. I'm not going to upgrade just yet. My site has not come down since last week and I have been using it frequently via FTP. I have noticed major improvements with speed and accessibility. The response times in navigating through the mail and blog manager have also improved. So much so that - yes you guessed it, I have created yet another blog.

The focus of that blog will be for my personal business and tech interests. With the exception to seosource, a search engine blog that is not linked in the navigation above but part of my profile, the blogs I have here are dedicated for my hobbies. Most of my readings deal within the technology/internet sector (the industry I work in), whether it's through trade magazine, newsletters and other tech blogs. I'm going to take a dabble and share my experiences to an area I am very familiar and have a strong interest in.

To sum up this post... I am a happy camper once again with my hosting company and appreciate those e-mails and posts I received from a few of you with your recommendations. I am not sorry for deleting the comments from all you other spammers! :)

Music Industry Investigated Over Pricing

The music industry has made no secret of its desire to raise prices of legal music downloads, but the record labels have instead raised the ire of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer has subpoenaed the four major music companies as part of an investigation into collusion on the pricing of digital music. | source: Nate Mook, BetaNews

Thank goodness! As an avid music addict I hope prices don't go any higher. I think we've been swindled far too long, with those $16.99-$17.99 CDs for only 11 songs. This was the price of regular sale price CDs about a year ago. I have noticed that those prices are not as common, now regular prices in the ballpark of $13.99-$14.99. Now with services such as Napster, iTunes and rhapsody song downloads is more common. The average going rate per download is 0.99 cents per song. I am a user that must love the song extremely for me to download it. I still pay Napster for their music listening service. I enjoy listening to a full CD and determine if it's worth purchasing. I rather buy CDs at sale prices and have the artwork that comes with. I've also been yahoo LaunchCast member for years and the news that yahoo has entered the music download industry is of no surprise. I've used Napster, music match, AOL music, rhapsody paid services and prefer Napster. I don't think I'll subscribe to yahoo full version, even though the song rate is 0.79 cents per song. I do enjoy rating the different songs and customizing my own radio station on the yahoo free version. Napster has a function to build your own radio station based on the playlist you create. I will continue to pay my eight bucks to them for a while.

Merry Christmas!!!

It seems my gifts to the family were well received. That makes me very glad, as you may have read it was a struggle to get all of them. I enjoy putting some thought into each gift and they all truly come from the heart. I spent Christmas eve with my family at my uncle's house. Our tradition is to wait until midnight to open all the gifts. It was a long night, I think I went to bed until 5:30am. Today is time to recuperate :)

Santa's Crib

Inspired by MTV's popular show CRIBS check out the most recent addition to the tours. It's Santa's Crib - powered by IFILM

The "Incident" Before Christmas Game

Tis the season to be merry...
but Santa's helped himself to an eggnog too many. This fun little flash game allows you pick up the presents Santa has droped along the way. See how many presents you can recover at www.the-incident.com/flash.php

My Neighborhood Video

Do you want to feel dizzy? Follow the link below and take a drive along with me as I go towards my house. This short silent video clip was recently added to Google video - another experiment of mine. In this clip you will see the view from my car as we travel along the Chicago side streets and feel slightly nauseated along the way. View Celi's Chicago Side Street Video now.

ascii-Matrix movie

This may be old, but it's the first time I've seen animated ASCII text. Nice matrix clip at - www.justbewise.net/matrix.html

Hosting Providers

This is so frustrating - I need a new hosting provider! The service I use to host my freelance site and inclusively some of the style sheets I use in my other blogs has been completely down for a few days now. My Chicago photoblog, the most popular section of this blog site, is completely dependent on the style sheets housed in these non responsive servers and it looks horrible. What I hate now is having to do the research and trying to find a better, reliable service and a reasonable price. Any suggestions? Unfortunately this isn't a fluke, it's time to take my business elsewhere.

My Christmas List 2005

What is in your Christmas list? I've noticed that my list is pretty much the same year after year. CDs & DVDs always make the list along with other items. Which CDs and movies are on that list this year? This will give you an idea of what I listen to and watch. My tastes are usually very broad, but these are the items I do not have in my collection yet :)

CDs...
The Killers - Hott Fuss
Shakira - Oral Fixation vol II
Toni Braxton - Libra
Green Day - American Idiot
Cypress Hill - Greates Hits From The Bong
Interpol - Antics
Michael Bubble - Caught In The Act
Maroon 5 - Live Friday The 13th
Joss Stone - Mind Body & Soul, Special Edition
Madonna Tribute Band - Smooth Sax Tribute to Madonna's Greatest Hits

DVDs...
Mr & Mrs Smith
The Island
Sin City
The Polar Express
Sex & The City - Vol 6 part II
Spiderman II
Hotel Rwanda
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Collateral
Bourne Supremacy

Shopping vs. Geeking

In less than two weeks Christmas will be here and I am in trouble! I am no where near complete getting all my gifts. I'm not in the mood for shopping these days, this weekend was horrible. I went out shopping with my sister and was frustrated with the traffic to and from various stores. That's what I get for not doing my online shopping early.

I've actually come home and have been expirementing with google and yahoo maps. I haven't decided yet which I prefer. I've implemented a version of each on my freelance site and pinpointed the coordinates to the loop area. I know it's hard to believe I prefer geeking out over shopping? (Well maybe not that hard to believe?) I'll keep playing with them, I like certain things from both of them. It seems the google map loads faster, but I like the zoom control on yahoo. See the work in progress here:
http://www.exceliweb.com/googlemap.htm
http://www.exceliweb.com/yahoomap.htm

Which do you prefer?