Brandon Notices

Since May, construction workers have been working across the street from our cul-de-sac. For those of you unfamiliar with my cul-de-sac, it opens up into the side of a steep road. Across the street from the cul-de-sac used to be a small forest, but that's gone now. They cleared the forest and will put up some townhouses or something.

They've been a general nuisance since day one. First, they get rid of our lovely trees, and with that, our lovely sense of privacy. (Not that I promote deforestation or anything, but at the very least, we get a little more sun without the trees, so perhaps we'll have less snow lingering during the winter.) They also messed up the street, too! It was recently repaved and very nice, but they tore it up to put in plumbing and stuff! When they were repaving (sloppily, I might add--it doesn't look smooth anymore), they blocked off both the top and the bottom of the hill, making it impossible to get a car in or out of the cul-de-sac. Yesterday, for the better part of an hour, they blocked off the mouth of our cul-de-sac (see picture). But today, they've taken it a step too far. They've cut off our power!

I returned from my first day of school not too long ago, and Mom was here for her lunch break at the same time. We noticed that the power was out when Mom opened the fridge to pull out some leftovers. No fridge light! I also noticed that the Jellybell wasn't turning on. (Oh, Jellybell's my desktop computer's name.) I found this annoying, because I had some school stuff I wanted to do. On her way back to work, Mom stopped to ask the construction people if they were responsible for the power outage. She called me on my cell phone to inform me that they would have the power off for several hours! She also reported that they weren't really very polite about it, either.

Aren't they supposed to give notice before cutting off the power? Seeing how nobody was home at the time, I guess there was no one to give notice to. But still... I hope they finish soon. They've been working there since May, and they still don't have any buildings up! They have a few foundations, I guess, but come on! They spent what seemed like months just pushing the dirt around.

I'm typing this on Scooter (that's my laptop), leeching the Internet from some neighbor not too far away. I have only forty minutes of battery power left. After that, I will be unable to recharge it. Aaack!

Oh! The power just came on. And I was just about to click Publish, too! Oh, what a coincidence...

A computer program I came across this summer has completely changed the way I use the Internet. It's Microsoft's Windows Live Mail, and it's currently in the beta phase. Even so, it seems to work remarkably well. Windows Live Mail is an e-mail client, and it's very clean looking; there are no ugly ads or anything. There is one specific feature, however, that has revolutionized how I view content on the Internet: web feed aggregation.

I'm a fan of many websites on the Internet, but it was always tedious to have to click on each of the items in my Links folder to check if the authors of those sites had updated with any new content. Web feeds fix this problem. Basically, they deliver new content to you whenever it's available, as long as you have an aggregator--a program that gathers web feeds together. Windows Live Mail is an aggregator, and a good one at that. Internet Explorer 7 also has a built-in aggregator, but I think it's rather limited.

The thing I like best about Windows Live Mail's is that it has an option to show you only your unread feeds, and it lists them kinda like e-mails. You can open a feed, read it, and then read through the rest of your unread feeds. It's nice to not have to dig through a big mixture of read and unread articles. Another thing I really really like is that you can choose to have Windows Live Mail display the article directly as a webpage (instead of a summary and a link to the article), and it does this right within the program. Right now, it won't display JavaScript or Flash; that's something I hope Microsoft makes available for the release version.

Be sure to check out this blog's feed if you're interested in web feeds.

What do you think when I show you this picture of a pair of raggedy, non-corn-fed puppet chickens?



If you thought of Foster Farms, then you would be correct. But isn't there something a little odd here? You saw a picture of two disgusting, inferior chickens, and you thought of Foster Farms? I'm sure that this isn't the image that Foster Farms wants to portray, so it's a little unfortunate that I think of Foster Farms when I see this chicken duo.

This black neighbor cat has repeatedly visited our back porch over the last week or so, and more recently, it's been sleeping on the porch swing. It's even pretty friendly and lets me sit next to it and pet it. This neighbor cat, which has big ears and I think is named Midnight, is making my own cat, Garth, paranoid. Garth is usually friendly around people he's familiar with, but he absolutely HATES to see strange cats near his house. He even hisses through the screen door. My cat really needs to learn some manners.

Oh, I just realized that I already wrote about this cat a month ago.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Notice that there's nothing along the lines of "nor someone's car parked in front of the mailboxes" in there, and that's the main reason why we haven't been getting mail recently.

Our neighbors have a very steep driveway, so their visiting company parks at the foot of the driveway, in front of the mailboxes. Lazy Mr. Mailman refuses to step out of his mail truck to deliver our mail, which is kinda sucky. He'll take the time the next day, however, to write "Couldn't deliver; car blocking mailboxes" on everyone's mail.

I've asked the USPS if there's something I can do, but I'm pretty sure they're only going to tell me that we're SOL. The police also say they can't do anything about the cars. I'm sure there's some law documented somewhere highlighting that you aren't supposed to park in front of mailboxes.

A few of the little neighbor kids these past few days have really gotten into playing Ding Dong Ditch. They've been playing it and off all day today, so I thought it would be fun to set up a camera so I could watch a live feed of the porch remotely.

In the feed, I saw Jesse run under the porch. Then I saw Davey run up the stairs with toddler Patrick shortly in tow. After Davey rang the door bell, I took a still from the feed. Davey stumbled quickly down the stairs and hid under the porch, but Patrick just stood on the porch, not knowing to hide. I watched as he stood there for what was probably about 20 seconds. Then I saw them all dash away together in the background. A minute later, I stepped outsie and told them that they would have to do a better job than that, because I could see everything they did. I told them every event that I could remember from the video, pointing out that Patrick stood on the stairs far too long. Jesse asked me how I knew all that, so I presented them a printed copy of the still I took, which you see to the right. They were surprised and thrilled to notice the webcam in my window.

A little while later, I set a single wrapped popcicle on the porch and then quickly went inside to watch as they all three walked up on the porch and grabbed the popcicle. I later learned that Jesse alone ate it, because his tongue was orange. After that, they rang the door bell, asking me for gumballs, but we got rid of those a long time ago. Patrick was upset about not having a popcicle, and I explained facetiously that they were all three meant to split the orange-flavored one, but I shortly after that chucked two more popcicles into the yard. Davey ate one, and I scolded Jesse for starting to eat a second one instead of giving it to Patrick.

A bunch of us are eating at Azteca. The waitress serving us was very strict in reminding us of the "one per table" clause of a coupon Mom wanted to use. However, she really didn't care to listen to my reasoning that our party is sitting at what is actually THREE tables, pushed together. Only when it comes to coupons does the definition of "table" change.

Tuna Noodle Gratin. It sounds really good, doesn't it? The picture on the box makes it look very appetizing, but when I went ahead and microwaved the meal, it ended up looking like slop. The box says that there is a "creamy sauce", but I would never have guessed from the picture that there would be so much of it! I wish there were more crunchy breadcrumbs, too, but they just kinda got buried under the sauce.

I know it's usually a given that the picture on the box will look better than the actual product, but come on, isn't this a bit of a stretch here? I'm not saying the food tasted bad—it was quite delicious, actually—but it just didn't look that good.

I'm still hungry. These things never fill me up.