PJ Trader

I started a scarf when I was traveling around Europe.  It’s an easy ribbed scarf with a touch of crochet on the edging.  I chose to do it in a couple of balls of Berroco Comfort DK I’d bought in a LYS in Falls Church, Virginia during a business trip.  The ladies there coaxed me to buy two balls – “enough for a scarf” they said.

Of course, it’s not.  I need 3 balls. 

And every serious knitter and crocheter knows that “the curse of the Dye Lot” will happen.  I bought this stuff a year ago.  What would be the chance of finding another ball of that same dye lot?

Apparently not so hard.  I scored the same yarn and dye lot on Ebay last night.  Only $2.50 for the ball.  They actually had two and I had to talk myself out of buying both, after all – I only NEEDED one.  Then I’d be left with an orphan and what on earth would I do with it?

Of course, shipping cost me twice as much as the yarn did.

Here’s the scarf pattern.  Click on the picture to jump to the free download.  Registration might be required.

I’m an organizationally challenged person. I give it my best shot, but no matter what I try, I always fall short. I get tired of carrying planner books around, lists are lost or crumpled in the bottom of my purse, and well…you get the idea. But I’m an “out of sight – out of mind” kinda gal, so I need to see the things I need to do in order to get them done.

I do like lists, however, because of that great feeling you get when you cross items off of it, knowing that you’ve accomplished so much. But I needed a system where the lists were in one place, all the time, and I didn’t have to (necessarily) carry them around with me.

Enter Remember the Milk. RTM’s been around for awhile, despite the Beta tag attached to their logo. It’s a web application for making to-do lists. The beauty of RTM is in its simplicity. You make a list (or a whole bunch of lists) and put things to do on it. You can prioritize your items, move them between lists, copy them for other lists, and share your lists with other people. And that’s about it. A PRO account (for a very reasonable $25 per year) doesn’t get you a whole heck of a lot more; the major feature of PRO accounts is the ability to use RTM on your iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile smartphones

I’ve had an account with RTM for awhile, but never really used it much. For one thing, most web applications are blocked by my work computer (such as Google Docs, Zoho, Zenbe, etc.), so I hate to start using something only to see it go away as soon as I start relying on the stuff there. I’m really into “working in the cloud” – keeping my data online somewhere – so that I can access it from almost any computer I work at (except when blocked by internet filters). So RTM seemed like a good choice to start making lists with.

RTM doesn’t even have ads all over it! I don’t know if that will change when it comes out of beta, but I hope not. The clean, easy-to-use interface took me about five minutes to figure out. I now have sixteen new lists. Why so many, you ask?

I like daily lists, so I made seven labeled “Daily – 1>Sunday, Monday, Tues, etc.” so I can jot down things to be done on a specific day of my week. There’s a list called Personal, one for Shopping, and even one where I list all the uncompleted knitting and crocheting projects I want to get finished. (Oh wait, I just remembered a new item for my list…hang on one while I go write it down. Ok, back.)

I open up RTM in the morning and leave it in my browser window all day. To add a new task, Iike I just did, I simply click the list I want to add it to, either use the ADD TASK link (or the keyboard shortcut is a simple “T” keystroke) and write my task. I can add all sorts of information to the task, like a due date, a URL associated with the task, text notes, tags, locations, repeats, and more. I haven’t gotten sophisticated enough with my lists to use many of those features, but they’re there for the really organized person.

After getting all my lists together, I printed off today’s list on a couple of index cards to carry around. As I thought of a couple of more items to do today, I wrote them on the list, then added them to RTM when I logged in for the day. Sweet!

We’ll see how well this works out as I change offices at least twice in the next few weeks, will RTM help me stay on-track and organized?

What do you do to keep up with all the things that need to be done? Super-amazing memory? Sticky notes on the fridge? A daily planner stuffed to the brim?

Since one of the webdoggies was recently diagnosed with a severe allergy to dust mites, The Bob and I picked up our dust cloth and vacuum cleaner hoses and did a deep clean of our living areas this weekend. (Not that we don’t clean, but you know how it goes. A swipe here and a swipe there doesn’t always get those corners done.)

He put the music on and I immediately complained. Who can dust to slow “he-done-me-wrong” music. I’m not knocking country music, but cleaning requires something with a little attitude, something that gets the blood moving that says “Dirt Be Gone!”

Like what, he asked?

Not that our choices are limited, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the subject. (Besides which, I’m so not a fan of AC/DC.) Some Journey, I said. Or Cher. Something that kicks butt, you know?

Do you have cleaning music? What is it? Why do you pick that?

“I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.”

• Rick Blaine, in Casablanca

I started this post with that quote, partly because I’m researching the movie for a story and partly ’cause it’s true. Our petty little issues tend to get lost in the big picture.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have them. And lately one little issue I have is the discrimination of a certain major cellular phone carrier company and how they discriminate against their users.

It’s cell phone profiling, I say. And it’s wrong.

Let me take you back to last October, when my husband, The Bob, acquired a 3G iPhone. There’s no doubt that the iPhone is sexy, easy to use and, thanks to the marketing geniuses at Apple, a hot commodity. Which translates into $$$ (in theory) for the aftermarket add-ons, including applications aimed at iPhone users.

Now, to put this into perspective, I have owned a Windows Mobile based smartphone for a number of years. I like them. Right now, WinMo phones can do things the iPhone can not, which is why Bob has an iPhone and I don’t. But we share a family plan on AT&T’s wireless network under a single account. We both have equal plans that include data, voice, and text messaging.

But over the last several months, I’ve noticed that AT&T Wireless has given preference in some ways to iPhone users. One example is the iPhone application of Pandora. Pandora is a “music genome” project that maps similar musical genres. So, let’s say, you like Nine Inch Nails. You tell Pandora you like that group and they’ll play Nine Inch Nails and other similar music. It’s pretty cool.

Pandora has begun releasing its application for cell phones. You can get them for several smartphone models, including WinMo and iPhone platforms. But that’s where the difference ends. IPhone users get to play their Pandora application for free. I, however, have to pay AT&T Wireless a $7.99 subscription charge to play Pandora on my phone.

Why? We’re both using the exact same network, data stream and so on. We’re paying the same for our data access. Why do I have to pay a subscription fee and he doesn’t for the same thing?

Another disparity exists in the use of AT&T’s wi-fi hotspots. The new iPhone is wi-fi enabled, as are many Windows Mobile phones. You guessed it – iPhone users get free access to those hotspots while WinMo users must pay.

Is this phone discrimination legal? Why can one customer get better service than another, given equal phone capability? Seems to me that phone profiling is going on here, that there’s some conspiracy to keep some phones off the playground. It’s wrong, I say. Just wrong.