Amazon Cloud Player

Today I stumbled upon Amazon's new service, the Amazon Cloud Player.  This service allows you to upload all of your music files to a free online cloud storage locker hosted by Amazon.  The first 5GB are free, and your music purchases from Amazon don't count toward the storage limit.  You can buy more storage space for a very reasonable yearly rate if you need it, though I have just discovered that my current library of music sits at just about 4.8GB, and I could probably prune down the files I want online if I had to.  In the past I have traditionally used MP3 downloads from Amazon because the prices were better than iTunes, but more recently the prices from most services have more or less leveled out.  Oh, I should probably also mention that the Amazon Cloud Player, while being designed for music, can also store other file types.

The reason this service is a big deal is that digital licenses aren't required to upload your music, which that (if you're anything like me) the old files you had copied from CDs you purchased that don't have digital licenses attached can be uploaded to a place where they are stored and protected (YAY!).  And from the cloud storage, your songs can be streamed to any compatible device, and downloaded to your computer or device.  I note the downloading feature for Mr. Q, who recently went over to the dark side by purchasing a Mac.  At least for now, it appears that Amazon is taking a cheap shot at iOS by purposely making the streaming features of the service *not* work on iOS devices (there is, however, a download for Android).  I found another review where someone confirmed that this is not a Flash issue; however, a possible work around is that while you can't stream, downloading to iOS systems still works.

Of course, this awesome system does not come without its troubles.  The music industry is peeved that Amazon dare offer a streaming service where people can play the music that they have rightfully purchased and own, and will likely bring a lawsuit concerning digital licenses (read more about this issue here).  Obviously there is potential for abuse here, though I don't see how it could be any greater than any other cloud storage system, and those exist in abundance.  Personally, I think the music industry will end up having to let this one go or lose their case--it's overstepping the copyright to say that I can't store files I own in a legitimate cloud service.  If I were using it for criminal purposes instead of solely for personal use, then they would have a case, and I'm betting that existing anti-filesharing efforts would already net these culprits (i.e., when your ISP or Amazon notices that your IP address or Cloud account is seeing 50GB worth of downloading music files every day, something is probably up).

So, I encourage you all to check out this great service--this is a fantastic way to archive your music files to be sure you don't lose them when your computer dies and takes iTunes with it or your MP3 player get dropped in a bath tub.

Alula

The New Season of Our Lives

I am coming to realize that this year is holding more change than the typical year in our group.

Munchkin, your timer in the margin is getting set to run out, and there will be another new baby in our next generation and a new dynamic in our group and interactions.

Q, your husband will be out of school and starting into the "real world" with a career.  I also suspect that you will be facing some decisions soon about school, work, and family.

Lady A has a new boyfriend (you don't know him), and is considering going on a spirit quest to figure out what she wants from life.  Our Ambassador sent me an email that he has been accepted to graduate school to study history and will be moving back home from China this summer so that he can start in the fall.  (Ironically, there is a better than normal chance that one or both of these individuals will live in my spare room at some point in the coming year.)

I am finishing and leaving school, at least for the time being, and (HOPEFULLY) getting a job in the mean time.  I plan on spending more time with family and my books.  Mr. Borealis is looking to make a change in jobs if he can, and now he will be the one in school instead of me.

We have officially launched our business, and we have a website, and it will be interesting to see where that goes in the coming year.

So in preparation of these events, we have business to attend to:

-We need a new counter for our blog.  What's our next "big thing", y'all?

-Since the Ambassador will be back in town, would we like to do another pool on his life?  (Lady A has informed me that she finds this idea distasteful, but I feel we have only done this in good fun.  He's a cool guy with a fast-paced life who would probably be thrilled to know a group of women was gossiping about him.)

-If we were a television series, all of these changes would definitely demarcate a cliffhanger ending and start of a new season.  It's time for a new blog theme--thoughts on what it should look like or incorporate?

Alula

Just when I thought I was done...

The graduate school has fired off a new form for me to fill out before I can graduate.  I need to petition the school to have two classes I took as an advanced undergraduate student towards my MA.  Yes, being punished for overachieving.  I call 'em like I see 'em; and this smells like bull to me.  (sigh--doing the paperwork because I understand the need to formally document things 'for the record', but still smells like a delay tactic to get another semester of tuition out of me.)

I am still unable to finish my incomplete from last spring; the professor hasn't posted the assignments I need to do yet.  I am down to 4 weeks to finish this thing, so ready to be done with it, and the professor won't post the work I need to do.

I am once again on the publishing bandwagon; I need to get this done.  Recently I agonized over whether or not I should push to try and get in to my desired PhD program since the deadline has passed.  Mr. Borealis has been put in a situation because he thought, with 2 master's degrees, that I would have a job by now.  He dislikes the idea of my unemployment more than he dislikes the idea of my staying in school to keep a job.  But, I don't think I can get back into the program until fall of next year.

So now, I think I have resigned myself to focusing on writing and getting published until that time rolls around. Once again, seeking editors.

Alula

Keys!

Hey Ladies,

My schedule for the next two weeks has left me with two days off, it's been rather stressful and tiring. We are getting loads of beautiful new shoes so there is tons of work to be done. In the last week I have sku'ed over 1000 socks. There has been much work drama their in the last two months, one of my female coworkers got promoted to an assistant manager and consequently turned into a She-wolf. Mrs. Shewolf, as we will call her from here on out, has been making a huge distinction between "boy" and "girl" jobs. The boys are expected to do all the stock work, take out the trash, clean the store, check in the repairs, and sell the shoes. I being a girl am expected to dust and watch the boys do everything. If fact she chews me out of I cross over and get caught doing "boys" work. I however think this is nothing short of BS, and have been totally disregarding her, earning myself much street cred' with the man folk. I now get things lifted out of the way for me, and men scurrying up ladders to grab things for me, and let's not for get amazing shoulder rubs. The old saying "You catch more bees with honey" is really working out for me. Then we have tonight...

Why do keys go missing? I was at work tonight ready to leave after a long long day; one of the many days in my long long week, and alas, no keys. My guy coworkers were like "WTF Q?" So after walking me to my car, only to find my car locked and my keys sitting on the passenger's seat it was decided that I would wait inside with one of my managers until Mr. Q could bring me the spare, since we live about a half hour away from my work. I am going to hear about this for weeks.

Slave Labor

OK so I got in trouble with Mr Man completely my fault I did something really stupid. And so being the chicken I am ran away to be in the area at my mothers house, where I was promptly put into slave labor. So far I have cleaned, cooked, sorted files and drove my mother around. I guess it really isn't slave labor when she is buying me things like a MP3 player I have no clue how to work as of yet. I will be painting sometime next week, but tomorrow we are finishing things for the craft fair coming up Saturday. Also my sisters state drumline competition is coming up, call me if anyone wants details on the when and where. BTW scratching a mans car while washing it really makes them mad at least mine mad.

2 Deaths and 1 Birth?

Ladies -

I am currently awaiting the news that two of my relatives have passed away, and to see when I go into labor.

My Great Uncle on my mother's side is on his second trip to hospice, and is now on only morphine, and to my knowledge doesn't even have a feeding tube anymore. He really is a remarkable man. Though he is mentally retarded (and yes I will not be PC because that's what he refers to himself as) he has a wonderful big heart, tons of friends and loves Elmo. He deserves to be remembered as the gentle, kind and childlike giant that he was once he passes.

Also, my Great Grandfather J (on my dad's side) is now on his second trip to the hospital and has had a relative with him non-stop each day to make sure he's got someone there is he goes. This has incredible strength and perseverance. At 67 years old he obtained his private pilot's license (he's the only other pilot in my family) strictly because he wanted to. He's had girl friends that just love him silly, and drove himself from place to place without issue until just the past couple years. He will be dearly missed by everyone who's met him when he passes on to the next life.

In the face of all this sadness, I am planning on bringing joy to my families by adding my newborn boy. This could happen as soon as Monday. I sincerely hope that I my Great Grandpa J can hold on long enough to let me get up there to introduce him to his first Great Great Grandchild. I've been planning on making that trip up there before he died since I found out I was pregnant. Though I would still make the trip for the rest of the family's sake, I specifically wanted to go to see him and let him meet the baby.

At this time, I pray for an easy passing for both my relatives if it is their time to go, and I pray for a delivery without complication.

~Munchkin

Working on the mountain again

OK so yes I said last year I would not work on the mountain again this year (the amusement park like thing that is at the top of one of our local (smaller) mountains. But they invited me back and are willing to work with my crazy schedule I have for this summer. Including a trip to see my least favorite uncle get married and a much anticipated out to see Mr. Mans family. That will be a fun trip because Little man gets to learn to swim, hence going in the summer instead of spring like usual. Well I'll see how it goes working again they are actually adding a zip line and a bungee jump off the mountain this year, I hope their safety stuff is up to code. Well that's all from me and this crazy side of the state. Oh and little man recived a Thomas the Train bed from his dad and he loves it.

Sad news

This morning my grandmother passed away.  She had a stroke several weeks ago.  The doctors had her in rehabilitation therapy, but I guess she developed some chest congestion over the weekend, and she died early this morning.  It was kind of unexpected, because she was in therapy to get better.  It wasn't until yesterday they started to say that she likely wouldn't be with us much longer.

To clarify, this was my grandmother in North Carolina.  She was my dad's step mom, but she married my grandfather when my dad was still a child, so she was responsible for a good deal of his upbringing.  My dad was with her when she passed this morning.

I have an email out to my graduate advisor now to see if I can reschedule my comprehensive exam (supposed to happen this Friday) in the event that it conflicts with the funeral.  No word on when the funeral is going to be yet. I'm not sure what I'm going to do if that exam can't be rescheduled; the bloodsucking leach of a graduate school requires students to register in the semester they take the exam, and it is only offered once per year.  The cost of the required one credit hour?  ~$2,500.  If they do not let me reschedule for an unexpected death and postpone my graduation by a year, I will be pissed.  I have been studying like crazy for this stupid test.  ANd it really is a stupid test--the MA is made up of two parts: 36 credit hours worth of classes, and a 4-hour written exam.  Anyone who thinks these two aspects balance 50/50 needs a brain scan, because if 5 semesters of graduate study can be cancelled out by one 4 hours exam, there is something wrong.  That alone really has me hating the school right now.

I'm feeling a little surreal right now.  I put off calling because initially things were so confused, and my dad went out to help his dad, and he promised to keep us all informed via email (he did).  Then she was busy doing her physical therapy and seemed to be improving and all her kids were coming out to see her, but she was having trouble during the downtime and had to be sedated because she was pulling at her tubes (she had a feeding tube and sometimes a breathing apparatus because she lost control of the right side of her body).  Then she had to be sedated more and more, and she wasn't aware of who or what was around her--I never got a phone call.  I should have called, even if she wasn't aware when it happened.

Alula

From 0... to 100!!!

As some of you may know, the laptop that I've had for approximately 3 years has been giving up on my for the past 6 months. Luckily, thanks to my family and generous husband I've been able to upgrade form my old Toshiba Satellite to a custom beauty and it all started with this one sleek piece.

Before you is a Black Widow SopranoRS Case from my brother, and the other piece you can view is a Rocketfish 500 Watt ATX gaming power supply (it glows blue!).

Then we have our mother board and CPU. The motherboard is a real beauty, an Asus EVO, complete with artfully crafted blue heat-sinks over many of the capacitors to keep the entire thing running cool as a cucumber. The CPU happens to be an AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4GHz. Processor gets a Windows rating of 7.4 and uses all 4 cores to the max!

Now let's show the last few components. We have a 1TB hard drive (the only piece of this new beast I should have looked into more fully as it pulls my Windows rating down to a sad 5.9), an ATI Radeon 5750 graphics card (Windows rating of 7.2), and an LG 24x DVD drive. The operating system is Windows 7 Home premium, and I had to make sure that I got Office 2010 right away so that I could actually open my files again (2007 was accidentally removed from my laptop when I reformatted it, and I couldn't find my disk).

Munchkin 2 has some amazing power, and shouldn't have to be upgraded for at least a couple of years, unless I want my Windows rating to jump into the 7's with a solid state hard drive. The final pics are of the beautiful monitor I procured courtesy of Craigslist,and the tower lit up for the first time. Just to make it painfully clear to everyone who thought I could play WoW on my old laptop, I most certainly could not. I never realized that you could actually see the rain that everyone spoke of, I thought it was an exercise in imagination. My first time logging into WoW with Munchkin 2 I was swimming with my Goblin in the ocean, and crystal clear raindrops were bouncing off the water around me. It truly was a 0 to 100 moment!

~Munchkin

Darn baby store

Gimme at least three years before y'all make me go back to the baby store, kthanks