Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Find out instantly about blog updates.



Are you tired of visiting blog sites only to find out that there is nothing new? Want to keep up to date even though your friend doesn't update his blog very often?

Tired of checking this blog and finding that there is nothing new? Well, there is a really neat method of avoiding all the hassle: RSS. There are other names for it (XML, feeds, etc), but it's all the same. Basically, you have a program that automatically scans specific websites for updates, and then it downloads them as soon as they are available; you don't have to keep going back to check the website manually. It works for news, blogs, company websites, and more.

You can achieve this through a variety of programs for Mac or Windows (RSSOwl is a neat free program), or you can use your internet browser (Firefox and Safari have built in features for RSS). Safari natively accepts RSS feeds, and Firefox uses them via a method called "Live Bookmarks."

Try it out. It's nice to stay up to date on all of your friends' blogs without having to individually visit each website.

Check out this website for more instructions:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10088_7-5143460-1.html

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Our first year anniversary!

Our Dessert

Well, on May 6th we celebrated our one year anniversary. Believe it or not, we've been married for a year now. Our total time of knowing each other is around six years or so now.

To celebrate, we left our church groups early and headed out to Okubo, where we saw Rocky the Final (the movie). Before that, however, was the main part of our celebration: question and answer time. We sat together at dinner at an Italian restaurant in Okubo and asked each other questions about our first year together. Some of the questions we asked were, "What was your best memory of our first year?" and "What was your most embarrassing moment?" We also talked about less cheery topics, like "What one thing do you wish you could go back and change?" We learned a lot about how we each viewed our first year together.

The picture is of our dessert tray at the Italian restaurant. Not only did we have three small desserts, but we each had a pasta of our choice and unlimited pizza slices (each slice could fit in my hand without hanging over it, so they were small and thin). It was still good, of course!

Now, as if dinner and a movie weren't enough for one evening, we also did some shopping. Okubo has a large shopping area right next to the train station, and it interconnects through a series of covered walkways. There are two department stores as well as several smaller shops. We visited a shop called Pet City. We saw lots of cute animals, including one that put two holes in Kim's coat (don't worry, it wasn't her expensive leather jacket).

However, the highlight of that visit was finding a reasonably priced and nice hamster cage. Because Kim had always wanted something better for our hamster, I decided that I would purchase the cage; it was a sort of anniversary gift. I've included a photo so that you can see our little guy enjoying the wonderful new cage! Look for a special post all about our little guy, coming soon!

The new cage

GNutella's Cage




Gnutella has a mansion instead of a fish tank. The cage has 2 floors....to get to and from the floors, there is a yellow tube that he can crawel in. At first, we had to push him to go through the tunnel to get to the next floor and to his food. Eventually, he used it and made it. Ok...on the top floor is a wheel that he can run in for exersize. It's quiet and easy until he brings in some food with him.

On the main floor, he has his food, water and a PT tube to chew on. He likes the huge space and now he can run off some fat....lol Even though he has more space and a ball to run in, we still get him out once in a while.

We were talking last night about actually breaking down the cage and bringing it back to America in 2009! It's a really neat cage and a good purchase.