The Restless Mouse Blog

LakesideNovelty.com

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:13:00 +0000

If you were looking for Lakeside Novelty; We purchased the remaining inventory from Joel, and he also showed us where to get the merchandise

So now you can find great quantity discounts on old Lakeside items such as the light-up rose, the Permanent Match, the Magnetic Scotty Dogs, Naked Lady striptease pens, etc. here.

Please note that a lot of the old Lakeside items are no longer made, or they have become too pricey due to dollar value fluctuations. This is why we are (temporarily?) out of those fantastic Needle threaders.

Some things have become too expensive to produce due to product testing requirements, or associated changes in the rules– I believe this is the case with “Smoking Monkeys”, which I have been unable to find spare cigarette packs for in recent weeks.

If you have a Lakeside favorite that you don’t see on our website, be sure to click the CONTACT US button above, we will try to help.

Twitter still an enigma

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:09:00 +0000

We have an account on Twitter, mainly use it when I have something to say that would be an awful short blog post, maybe a quick joke, a coupon code or quick special, or whatever.

It seems that many or most people (Or uh, “tweeple”) follow dozens or hundreds of tweet accounts. So unless they are searching within Twitter, I doubt that our “followers” even notice our “tweets” as they go rushing by, this is one instance where the old saw about it being an “information superhighway” would seem to apply.

My main problem is that it seems to be such a tremendous waste of time to “follow” so many people, like me they only come up with anything interesting once in a blue moon, and time is too precious to monitor it.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go “buy” a couch for my “Sims” in Sims 3. Also I am reading a Phyllis Diller book, “Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse”. I have my priorities straight.

Only thing missing? Jamie Lee Curtis

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:28:00 +0000

~~Shift change at the Boeing Renton Factory~~
Uh, Fremont Zombie walk

(See, no lunchboxes)

Rumors of the death of Geo-caches

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:42:00 +0000

Rumors of the death of Geocaching.com are greatly exaggerated; It’s down today and possibly several more days, due to a fire in the building that host the sterile banks of whirring computer servers that are the very lifeblood of any website.

Oddly enough, the building is in downtown Seattle, practically in the shadow of the Space Needle. I always envisioned these computers to be housed in some nondescript industrial park out in the boonies, not in prime Seattle real estate.

Unfortunately for me, it also knocked out our Verizon Internet for a time. There was a flurry of modem-resetting and “Is yours working?”, wailing and gnashing of teeth of course.

Teresa gnashes at the drop of a hat, I have been meaning to talk to her about that.

But I digress. The problem with Internet outages is that there is no good way to determine if it’s signal, hardware or software. I could call Verizon, but I have a feeling they are overtly covert about outages. (We watched “Burn after Reading” and now I am emailing friends to ask if by not emailing me, they are being “Overtly Covert” or “Covertly Overt”. Third possibility – They are trying to avoid my inane questions.)

RIP BILLY MAYS

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:27:00 +0000

I clicked on the link to a video about the untimely and sad death of Billy Mays, as usual it was preceded by a commercial.

At first I was offended by that, is nothing sacred? But then I realized how totally and completely appropriate it was. I only wish it was for something that made me want to run to the phone and order it. I may never feel that way again.

Please Mr. Mailman, OK

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:31:00 +0000

Heh, "stray at home mom"

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:20:00 +0000

Awww... Smile! It's Father's Day! I got Sims 3 from number one son... now trying to set it up to play YouTube videos on the sims TV sets...

By the way, this is Louis Prima, not Armstrong.

I must somehow duplicate myself

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:20:00 +0000

We’ve been gradually adding quantity discounts at ThatRestlessMouse.com – My goal was to finish adding all the items to the new “virtual cash register” software, THAT is a big job.

It doesn’t help productivity that I got “Sims 3” for Father’s Day. Those sims are harsh taskmasters, but at least they can somewhat take care of themselves in this version.

In earlier versions of that SIMS series, there would be situations where for some reason the sim would refuse to use the facilities, and would pee in the hall. Good thing they haven’t invented stink-o-vision yet.

Vios Day 5

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:58:00 +0000

I haven’t gotten much time to sit and watch TV lately, but what I have seen of the new Verizon Vios service on the TV side, I’m loving it. It blows cable out of the water.

Got a letter from Comcast today, informing me that Verizon is selling it’s fiber optic and telephone land line operations, or some portion thereof, to Frontier communications.

This smells like desperation. Should I be concerned? I remember when Verizon bought our phone line from GTE, nothing bad happened then.

I suppose it might put a few people off of switching to Verizon’s Vios from Comcast, especially with the unfortunate name of the new provider. Frontier? Are they going to come down main street with guns blazing, “This here Internet ain’t big enough for the both of us!”. Are they going to censor my Internet service? “We won’t be havin’ you lookin’ at no dadblame dance-hall girls on our range! ‘specially the ones of questionable virtue!”

Anyhow, my contract still saves me about $230 total over the first year, including the $100 visa card I had better actually get. The phone has free LD, voice mail, Caller ID, etc. The internet is much faster. The TV has channels galore, including TV land, which we had been pining for. So yeah, so far, I recommend the switch. We will see what happens when those rascals from Frontier ride into town.

New quantity discount system

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:36:00 +0000

I got to thinking, boy, it’s a real pain in the patootie to run two website, and we are always running into inventory related problems because of it. Also, I am tired of looking at this stupid computer monitor.

So I set up quantity discounts at ThatRestlessMouse.com, and we will be closing the NoveltyTradingPost.com site as soon as I get those discounts punched in.

So if you see discounts on some items but not on others, that’s why; I am also working a lot of overtime at my “drudgery” job, and nobody else around here wants to give the website any love, so it will take maybe a few weeks.

The goal is to be ever-so-slightly cheaper than the “competition” on almost every item. (Let’s not get carried away!)

Charlie Sheen installed Fios

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:12:00 +0000

6/11/09 We had a guy from Verizon come out today and set us up with Telephone, TV and Internet via Fiber Optics. We all agree, he looks, sounds, and acts exactly like Charlie Sheen. Maybe a slightly less cheerful version of Charlie Sheen, but he has a sort of crappy job.

Anyway, I will probably blog a series of comments about this. I usually try to knock something out right before I leave for my night job, and of course it ends up looking sort of truncated because I’m always running late. It’s a passive-aggressive thang.

So, tip #1 for those installing Fios; immediately set up a “purchase password” under the “Parental Controls” menu, even if you live alone. Charlie says it’s easy to accidentally rent a movie otherwise.

Making a switch

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:40:00 +0000

I am still planning to get my all of my TV signal over the Internet, as stated earlier here.

In fact, I unplugged the bedroom TV’s “digital conversion box” that Comcast sent me, (It seems to be defective) and we get all of our TV in that room from DVDs, VHS tapes, or Internet sources, mainly the streaming movies that Netflix offers.

Those streaming movies are great, because if you stop and go do something else, even if you shut down the computer, when you come back to the Netflix page, you can start exactly where you left off, or optionally do it the old way, by scene selection.

But that’s not what I came here to talk about. We have signed up with Verizon fiber optic (Fios) service for telephone, TV signal (similar to basic cable) and Internet (basically faster broadband).

I wish I had done more research, I just read where some guy insisted that they leave the copper wire for the old POTS phone service, and Verizon capitulated.

My plan was to get rid of the cell phone since the fiber-optic phone includes free long distance, but there’s a catch; if the power goes out, you only have 8 hours or so of phone service. (Probably less if there is a teenage girl in the house!) So I guess we should keep at least one cell phone around. We get very good coverage here.

I am obligated to this setup for about one year, maybe I will switch to a cable modem and no TV service then. (or at least threaten to)

Big brother is watching, but not really paying attention.

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:44:00 +0000

I got a call from my “night job” employer’s “wellness program” the other day.

I had never called their dial-a-nurse thing nor had I had any other contact with them. Then they called me out of the blue, (on a Sunday!) – Wanted to know if I had questions about Diabetes or any other health issues.

Naturally, I was all "I'm not interested" but somehow we got to talking and I did get some questions answered, but later I started getting a little paranoid about it.

All that is supposed to be between me and my doctor's janitor (I never get to see the actual Dr., it will be no surprise if I find he died in a Turkish prison in 2002) - Whatever happened to HIPPA (patient privacy) laws? I want to control who and why and how for looking at my fascinating medical history, not sure why I care.

They say the Wellness program is run by the insurance company, and since the company is footing the bill it seems reasonable that they have a general idea of what my ailments are, so they can plan ahead to pay for my new parts and bionic upgrades.

Even so, it still kind of feels creepy to have them call me, no matter how helpful.

I miss everything!

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:44:00 +0000

LED bicycle wheel lighting from MonkeyLectric; WHY didn’t they have these back when I was a kid? Very cool, and your parents would buy them if you gave them a good “safety” pitch.

I sent away for some stripey clip-on straw things from a cereal-box promotion, but that’s only slightly better than a clothespin-and-playing-card setup.

I'm getting this if I ever move to an urban environment where it's practical to ride a bike.

Learn a new skill!

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 04:29:00 +0000

I keep hoping my son will learn to weld &/or solder… So he can crank out stuff like this for me to peddle on our website. We used to have a product called “Fork You!” which was exactly what you are thinking of, the dumb things sold like, well, “hotcakes”

Blogjet posts quickly

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:52:00 +0000

This BlogJet blog posting software has a few little glitches, but I think I will buy a license anyway. Just because it posts to Blogger so FAST. When I post directly at the blogger site it seems to take forever.

Maybe they set it up that way to minimize traffic. Seems kinda dumb if so.

LibraryThing thing.

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:44:00 +0000

Putting a bunch of my books on LibraryThing.com, the recommendations they come up with (based on my reading habits and ratings) are just awesome.

Click on one of the books displayed for more information, some of them I have even written mini-reviews. While Rome burns around me.

No more "tags"

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:07:00 +0000

Trying out that blog publishing software, “BlogJet” – I found it’s a LOT easier to use than the blogger.com interface. Unfortunately, it does not support blogger’s version of “tags” (They call them “labels”) – It has some third party system via Technoratty – not my cup of tea.

But then I thought, well, who needs tags anyway? So I dug up my “Custom Google Search Engine” and tweaked it.

So now, if you want to see, perhaps all the posts about Petey D. Dog, just use the green box with the orange border on your left, search for “Petey”. It also searches our webstore, so if you search for “fart” it will show blog posts about farts, and also links to our fart spray, fart “pull my finger” pen, Fart noises CD, etc. Isn’t technology grand?

Furthermore, I am hoping to also have a “tag cloud” that automatically displays popular search terms below the box. This is the forte of Lijit.com, they provide a custom results page too. Unfortunately I can’t seem to tweak it to exclude certain results (such as directory pages) that do not enhance the glorious visitor experience. I sent then an email, hopefully they will have a fix. It’s probably my lack of understanding that blocks the path of enlightenment, grasshopper.

Testing BlogJet

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:33:00 +0000

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It's a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com – Here is a gratuitous picture of my dog.

One slight problem I see, it is very easy to knock a picture out of the original perspective. Maybe they plan to fix that.

Blogjet included this quote in the sample post;

"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination." -- Albert Einstein

…Did he really say that? I mean Albert Einstein supposedly died in 1955. He would have been amazed by a Commodore 64. Yes, this thing has those awful “smilies”. And I will use them profusely.

The Forgotten Things

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:29:00 +0000

I tell ya, I'm losing my mind. Set off for my night job, had to turn around, forgot my stupid ID badge. Like they don't know me. But those are the rules.

Then I got to thinking, "Why haven't we sold any of those grab bags at That Restless Mouse? They're a great value at just $3.99! Teresa puts all kinds of stuff in those crazy bags.".

As it turns out, apparently I forgot to put that item on the website. Since most of our customers are not mind readers, I reckon this accounts for the lack of sales.

So, I reposted the "mystery grab bag", vowing that we would stuff them even more with great fun items. Click here to get yours today!

Tool for the fickle

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:29:00 +0000

I am one of the most fickle people around when it comes to Internet sites, tools, and gadgets. I don't even need a reason, I'll jump ship in the blink of an eye.

This is why I love this Firefox add-on for managing your bookmarks, Xmarks.com - I hardly use the regular bookmarks, but it puts a little "i" in the address bar, click it when you are at the website of one of the tools you like, and it will provide a short list of VERY similar sites- I know lots of social bookmarking sites have a feature like this, but the key difference is that somehow Xmarks hones in on sites that are very similar.

Case in point, I have been using MyHq.com for a portable "one screen" most-used bookmark manager for months, (maybe years!) because I didn't see anything similar- but Xmarks turned me on to MyLinkVault.com - Haven't set it up yet but it looks like it does the same thing but the categories roll up, and it's much easier on the old retinas. They are both free.

What other sites will inspire me to turn traitor on my favorite tools? Time will tell.

Ziggy is like the Rat

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:44:00 +0000

How so, Rat? The only difference is, Ziggy would bring flowers.

Little Yard of Horrors

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:28:00 +0000

I didn't think much about this ad for a "Homeowner Chipper" until I realized to my horror, I'M A HOMEOWNER. And I don't mean that in a good way.

It's the "self-feeding" feature that kind of scares me.

The rules have changed

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 30 May 2009 08:34:00 +0000

(Thanks XKCD.com)

I used to have Teriyaki every Wednesday at work and they got me started on adding "in bed" to fortune cookie fortunes. The "Except in bed" rule seems like it might be more fun. I was trying to think of some third option, any ideas?

Farting around with the blog thing...

noreply@blogger.com (The Restless Mouse) — Sat, 30 May 2009 06:49:00 +0000

I was farting around with the Blog settings, added some Googley advertising there, I was inspired because we just got a $100 check (For about two years of ads, but still, better than a poke in the eye!) - I lightened up the background a bit too, hopefully it's easier to read. I know the things I put on the internet look like where Andy Warhol threw up crayons, but it's not like I have a boss here, and only like twelve people a day manage to subject themselves to it.

Maybe someday I will hire an eighth grader to redesign the thing, and then mow the lawn.