Wow, July is full of a lot of birthdays. We celebrated my dad’s birthday this past week, countzero2k7‘s was this week, Daniel’s is tomorrow, and Lucas Meacham’s is Tuesday. The later was celebrated yesterday. I think it was really the first 1st birthday party that I’ve been to since my own brother‘s way back in the day. There wasn’t a much diving into cake as I would’ve figured. In fact, he seemed kind of hesitant 😀

The quality of the video is kinda “meh”. I was experimenting with my new phone a bit. Apparently, it does 720p far better than it does QVGA:

(Lucas Meacham’s First Birthday Cake)

In other news, it’s still hot 😐 High 90s and plenty of humidity. Boo.

Ruthie’s coming back from Louisville today. Yay! 😀 She was up there for a dinner theatre presentation that she was going to with her mom. I don’t like musicals much, so she goes up for all of the those, and I go up with her for all of the plays.

Here’s an interesting one for ya. Apparently, Britain is now moving away from the direction that we’re going with that whole health care thing:

Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care

I shudder to think how much my paycheck is going to shrink this coming January with the expiration of the “evil” Bush tax cuts and the anticipated increases in premiums for insurance, what with a program that was supposedly going to “help” with them 😐

It’s definitely one of “those” Alabama summers. We’re having nothing but days in the 90s, with humidity in at least the 80% range. Quite miserable. Ruthie is training for a marathon she’s running with Keith in October in Chicago, and found she had to segment out her 7 mile run yesterday. Running while trying to breathe in what is effectively water is no fun at all.

I’m getting a new phone, supposedly this week. We’ll see. I pre-ordered a Motorola Droid X from Best Buy late last month. I am kind of ambivalent that I will be getting it the day of the release (the 15th, this week!). If it’s a popular phone, I’m betting supplies will be as spare as they were (and still are) with the likes of the HTC Incredible. Anyhoo, this is my first jaunt into the world of Android, so I’ll probably post a review when I’ve had some time to try it out and hack the snot out of it 😀

We saw Despicable Me on Friday. It was a cute movie. We didn’t see it in 3D, which is certainly quite fine with me; I tend to get headaches either because of the glasses or because of something with the rendering. I really don’t know which. The only movie that didn’t happen with was Avatar. Before the movie, we gave Cheddar’s a whirl; it was both of our first times there and we loved it.

I’m currently reading a Star Trek novel, something I hadn’t done in a while before my last couple of novels. It takes place in Archer’s era, during the Romulan War. What’s most interesting is how they have to step back in technology on newer starships (Daedelus-class ships, like what the Archon presumably was). It essentially gives some reason in the storyline why Kirk’s Enterprise (from the original series and original timeline) looked the way it did. A rather unique Romulan weapon necessitated this reversion. It sort of reminded me of why the Soviet Union used vacuum tubes for decades in their aircraft long after solid state became big; to escape the ravages of an EMP in a nuclear attack. Anyway, it was a rather interesting element of a very engrossing plot. If you’re a Trekkie, I’d highly recommend it.

Cubs keep suckin’ it, but that’s just normal 😀 They actually had a pretty good game against the Dodgers yesterday, but I’m not being lulled into a false sense of a streak here. If they’re not .500 by the All-Star Break, then I’m pretty sure all bets are off.

My mom actually *GASP* got a laptop 😮 It’s a hand-me-down from my brother. I refitted it with a new optical drive and RAM and gave it to her, in better shape than it was when Keith had it in its prime. It’s such an old lappy, though, that it’s pretty much nothing more than a netbook as far as caliber of power goes. Celeron M with 2GB of 766MHz DDR and an integrated Intel vid card. It’s running XP, of course. Good enough for email and basic stuff.