Just
saw this -- my first Netflix movie which got here 2 days
after I ordered it. Netflix has a two-week free trial
that I am using right now. The way this works is, for a
monthly fee of $9.99, I get one movie sent to me. Before
that, I go online at the Netflix main site to sign up
and make a list of the movies I want to see and the
order I want to see them in.
Then Netflix sends
me the first one on the list. I keep it as long as I
want, then send it back in a prepaid mailer. They will
immediately send the next movie on my list. Since this
is coming from a city only 100 miles away, the turnover
is pretty fast. It looks like this could be MUCH cheaper
than renting from a video store -- and more convenient
for not having to go further than my mailbox to return
the movie.
I like my first experience and I --
finally -- got to see "Raising Helen". Kate Hudson is a
beauty and fun to watch. She seems like a truly cheerful
person. I enjoyed the movie -- except I wish the
romantic angle was a little stronger and there was not
such a strong overtone of sadness about her sister's
death. Her boyfriend was not a big help and did not work
miracles in her behalf. He was almost an afterthought.
Finally, I am devoting more
time to catching up on movies I wanted to see, but never
got around to it (what better to do on wet, cold wintry
days?). I went to the local Blockbusters and rented two
movies for about $10, then I discovered Netflix - movies
mailed to my home for $10 a month and in unlimited
choices and amounts -- -- plus I never have to drive anywhere to return
them. Sheesh, there's no competition -- so I joined
Netflix and am waiting for my first selection to arrive.
They say the movies are mailed very quickly. I expect my
first one today or tomorrow.
Recently, I saw Corpse
Bride and Just Like Heaven. Funny in Corpse Bride how
the living world was dark and gray and the world of the
dead was colorful and more fun. Two nice brides in the
movie, both deserving a happy ending, but only one
really has a happy ending - kind of sad, but still a
great movie.
Just Like Heaven is a sweet
sentimental romance with a nice
happily-ever-after ending - my kind of feel-good movie.
This is a source of cute sparkly graphics. I
like these and plan to make my own "glitter" effects for
making sparkling little things. I have yet to work out
an animated sparkling method for the little stuff - that
I like yet.
I had forgotten about how
we can
personalize our Google home page until I was
reading about it in
SimplyCute. I have neglected my Google news
page. It's really very useful with the news feeds on it,
widgets, gmail, etc., and I am going to fix it up and
add it to my homepage list in Firefox. (Love how Firefox
will load several sites at once as a homepage.)
Speaking of aggravations,
our Internet connection is going out every day. We
already had the cable company over to check and they
found nothing wrong. We think our cable modem has gone
bad. If its not one thing, its another. I am now trying
our son-in-law's old cable modem and it seems to have
solved the problem. Yay!
It's going to be a nice cozy day tomorrow. We are
icing up from the sleet that fell today. Roads are
closing. Many churches are cancelling meetings tomorrow.
I guess it will be a day for hot cocoa and snuggling.
I have somehow gotten a
damaged dll file. Skype will no longer work because it
says it cannot load olepro32.dll - groan!
Since installing a new spyware program, I am getting all
kinds of grief, even though it seems to be catching more
spyware than anything else I've ever had (highly
recommended in a computer magazine is SpyCatcher).
I am half tempted to uninstall it -- but then again,
the list of spyware it is finding is tremendous and
includes a keylogger, etc., that none of the other
spyware and virus programs on my system have noticed and
I am running Microsoft's program and a host of others.
Of course, SpyCatcher could be reading things wrong, but
no online searches seem to indicate this might be a
false positive -- and what about the other spy programs
it is catching? I don't think they all could be false.
Add to that, my computer just crashes itself at the
oddest moments and now I have a strange olepro32.dll
file. Strange in that:
Skype says it can not load this file.
Reinstalling Skype does not help.
Windows Explorer (the file manager)
does not show this file in the directory where it sits (even when
all hidden and protected files are set to show).
Booting in Safe Mode and then running
the file manager works. The file shows up in the list and can be
moved, deleted, etc.
Downloading and replacing it with the
same file does not work -- which makes it seem like this is a
registry problem. Did it get unregistered during one of my daily
computer crashes? And why does it not appear in regular mode in the
file manager? Checking the properties show it is not supposed to be
hidden - and again, all of my files are visible right now, even the
protected system files.
I have searched Microsoft
Help and Google and can not find a solution without having to pay a fee
to site that might or night not have the answer. I guess I may be stuck
rolling back my system a few days. ::sigh::
(Note: After spending half
the night, and rolling back Windows a few days to no avail, I discovered that it was SpyCatcher. Both SpywareDoctor and
SpyCatcher were ranked at the top by major computer magazines, but both
do too much - in messing up good programs as well. It was too high a
price to pay, so I removed it.)
Want
some great ideas for web site template? I spent much
time today at Template Kingdom. They sell
web designs (and claim
that each one is sold only once, keeping it unique), but
just looking through these gives great ideas to follow.
P.S. On the lefy is my
avatar for today. I started a
new ethnic group over there - "The Winged Persons
Society." Maybe it should have been "Winged Persons
with Cats."