so, i want to pose a (not so) hypothetical question. you pull into your driveway to discover that you have new next door neighbors of middle eastern decent (not that that matters or anything) and you happen to glance over and see something interesting. check it out:
do you see it there? let me give you a better look:
NOW do you see it? so, here’s the question: “what would you do?†do you think there’s cause for concern? i can’t imagine that the suburbs of renton, washington would be a huge target for al qaeda. then again, what’s that old saying? better safe than sorry, i believe. jana says that it’s probably no big deal, it’s just some weird giant vase from the vietnam war era or something. i’m still undecided. so, i pose this question to you all. what would you do? sound off in the comments and let me know. for the time being… oops… gotta go. i’m on hold with homeland security and it’s starting to ring. talk to you later.
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so, i was listening to the radio the other day (well, a podcast of a radio show) and a guy called in and talked about how he got in a fight with his father. he then made the mistake of explaining how his father “attackted” him.
[audio:Attacked.mp3]
check and mate.
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So, the iPhone app store was just released about a week ago. It allows iPhone users to me able to install 3rd party applications. Well, just today, wordpress released an application that allows wordpress users (like myself) to be able to blog right from their iPhone. This is my first example. This is the coolest phone ever.
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jacks hair has been getting a little shaggy lately so we figured it was about time to do something about it. i sat him down to start trimming and felt inspired. you see, yesterday i was talking to an old friend of mine from the police academy via video chat, and he showed me his son with a pretty rad mohawk (no, not some sort of faux hawk people, the real deal) and thought it looked killer. not being one for originality, i decided to see what it would look like on jack. well, follow the pictures below to See how it all played out.
so, there you have it (and don’t worry mom, as you’ve well learned, it grows back). fortunately my family has been pretty broken in by my radical hairstyles, so there’s not much that i can throw at them to shake them up. hmmmmm, it seems like I’ve just given myself a new challenge…
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…”it looks like you have throat ulcers.”
not the most exciting think you can hear from the doctor. let me fill you in on the back story. a few days ago i came down with a fever of about 103 which persisted for a couple of days. then that broke, and my throat started to feel sore (that was last night). well, all night i slept like crap because every time i would swallow, it woke me up. so, at around noon today i decided to go to the doctor and that’s when he told me i have throat ulcers.
“what causes that?”, i inquired.
“it’s either viral, or it’s an infection,” he told me.
i love when they give you options. i wasn’t sure if he was wanting me to guess, like some sort of game, or if it was like a choose your own adventure book where i got to pick what caused it. as it turns out, it was neither of those things, he just didn’t know. so he gave me some antibiotics in case it’s an infection, and if it’s viral it just has to run it’s course. they took a throat culture (there’s nothing cultured about a stranger shoving a 6″ long q-tip down your throat) and i should know “in a while” whether or not it’s an infection. he also gave me some hydrocodone for the pain. i just dropped a couple of those and i have to tell you that i’m living pretty large at the moment. i can’t even believe that i’m able to type coherently right now. maybe i should go driving to really test my limits…
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so, let me let you in on my situation. i’m a mac user and for mac users the main web browsers are safari and firefox. yeah, there’s opera and flock and this and that, blah, blah, blah. well, i’ve been a safari user for sometime now. firefox is great and all, but safari is just sooooo good looking. being a follower of the bauhas “form before function” school of design, i was drawn to safari. now, it’s a great browser and all, but there’s just so much that you can do with firefox. i was torn. well, as good as firefox was, it was just too ugly to pull me in. that’s all changed with the release of firefox 3 today. i was reading about some of the new features and they actually seemed pretty cool. there were some new features that i thought i wanted to try out, so i installed it. turns out that they gave it a total facelift. it really looks a lot more like safari while still retaining some of it’s individuality. take a look.
this is my pretty safari.
and the new firefox 3.
as you can see, they now look much more alike. i think i can live with the new look of firefox, and i’m really excited to test out some of it’s new features. gve it shot if you haven’t already. I’m loving it so far.
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asher made some big strides (pun intended) in his movement towards becoming a full fledged walker. he’s made several attempts over the past week or so, and has been able to take a couple steps here and there, but today he just seemed to go for it, as evidenced by the following photos.
and to really throw it into the way back machine, i’ve created an animated gif just for the occasion. i’ve taken great care to make sure that it’s as annoying as possible.
click here for animated goodness.
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this is a newsweek article written in 1995 about how the internet was never going to amount to anything. it’s awesome.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554
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i LOVE the apple store. i love living in a town that has an apple store. here’s why i’m saying all of this.
yesterday i was pulling my iphone out of my pocket and i dropped it. it was a relatively small fall onto carpet. it really shouldn’t have done anything. well, a minute or so later i got a call and the vibrate was WAAAAYYYY loud. it sounded like something was loose inside. well, that wasn’t going to abide. there’s no way that i could have my "silent" vibrate function sounding like a 747 getting ready for take-off. so i made an appointment at the genius bar at the apple store in the bellevue mall (the coolest mall that i’ve ever been to) no knowing what they were going to say. so, i show up and the guy looks at it for a second and then starts typing away on a macbook pro. the dialogue between him and i went something like this:
me: so, what’s the process here?
genius: oh, i was just going to swap it out. is that okay?
me: umm, yeah, that’ll be fine.
and now i have a new iphone. thanks apple. below are a couple of pictures of the new device.
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jana has been keeping her own blog for quite sometime now. the heller family.org has pretty much been run by me. when my life is hectic, nothing gets posted. well, i’ve finally figured a way to combine our two blogs. so now, when jana posts on her blog at http://www.janas-journal.blogspot.com/, the post will automatically be added to the heller family.org. there is harmony in the world. so you’ll probably be seeing a lot more content coming to the heller family.org now. jana’s insights tend to be more poignant and family related and mine, well, usually aren’t.  i hope you enjoy these two fresh perspectives on life through the heller’s eyes.
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