When one child refused to sign autographs unless she was provided with pink or purple Sharpies that had been custom-printed with her name, the staff tried to argue that black Sharpies—the only kind they had—would do just fine. But Sarah ordered them to do what the child said, and personalized pink and purple markers were produced.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I also recommend Rachel’s follow-up talk with Richard Engel for a summary of how screwed up Iraq still is.

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This auto period feature on Android is confusing me.Should I turn it off or figure out why I get a period automatically a third of the time? I guess I am inadvertently hitting the space bar twice?

…ok. so Android probably needs WiFi to upload a video without timing out…video to come later…

…ok, so the Android video format can’t be uploaded to WordPress…so it’s on YouTube now…

Blogging at 3:15 am from my new Android phone, an HTC Hero through CREDO. The iPhone 3G goes to gazelle.com tomorrow. One less customer for the Apple Genius Bar to have to serve on a busy Saturday afternoon.

No, I’m not moving back to Raleigh.

I really liked my Red Card. Oh, well.

So many people were doing this, trying to make a second-living through eBay. They made tens-of-thousands a month. Selling stuff on eBay could have been a full-time job.

When I was jobless or underemployed, I aspired to find a niche that could bring a few hundred dollars a month. It never happened. Lots of trips to the post offices. Lots of Excel spreadsheets that showed that a purchase and sale yielded a profit of $0.71 or a loss of $1.94. For the month of June 2001, I’ve made $38.19!!!  And twenty different transactions may have contributed to that windfall.

I always hoped to find the item I could buy for $10 and sell for $20. Profit of $7. Sell 600. That’s $4,200 a month! Cash free! I can live on that.  Except after I buy the first two, I see that they’re only selling for $14. The profit becomes $1.82. Maybe I can still make $1,000. But then I see they’re only selling for $12. Profit is a wash. The rest of the selling is just for break-even. I wouldn’t sell 600. I’d sell 50. Make $7 each on 8 of them. Make $4 each on 10 of them. Break-even on 10 of them. Sell the remaining 572 for a $20 shipping loss.  Total profit/loss: $76 profit for 600 transactions. 8 cents per transaction. Totally worth it.

How to make an extra $300 a month…a question that a smart person should be able to figure out. I think major caveat is that the work cannot be for someone else. Not 32 hours a month a Borders. All hours spent on my own project. I’m my own boss. As my own boss, I should be able to figure out something.

But I don’t know howto do anything. Way, way, wav behind the curve on web programming. Remedy programming for a micro-enterprise does not make much sense even though I would like it to.

I don’t want to get something for nothing in the world. I want my brainpower to yield some fortune.

It’s very disappointing. It makes me feel very little of myself.  Very frequently.

Not drunk. It’s ambien. Wonder drug ambien. Ambien. to exhaust yourself by exhausting all thoughts. Dump ‘em all out there. You won’t remember most of them in the morning, and that is a little freaky.

I have to censor, such as if I mention looking up the Flickr pics of a girl I liked a few years ago. Apparently, best friend figured out I had been browsing the wedding and honeymoon pics. It was just a mental exercise…no stalking mitochondria were activated. Don’t care so much about what is/was happening with “M” but it does a number to see her blissfully happy just a couple of years after she implied the problem wasn’t me, but her. “M” herself was a minor detail in the story. Just another chance to stare at myself in the mirror and think and think and think what could I possibly have done at point X in time so that history would be altered and maybe, just maybe, I could have made that miraculous connection.

Old friend of “M”s discovers the Flickr picture browsing, and she denounces me as a stalker in some comments. Given my sincere lack of interest in the new life of “M” and limited nature of my searching to easy query on M’s non-standard name, I think the “stalker” label was highly insidious.

In any event, I censored. That post is gone. I hate dong that.

What’s the point of this entry?  I am just adrift. Nothing coming up. No course of action to create anything coming up. Work. Dialysis. Holy shit, my house is a horrible disaster zone. I am hungry and tired. I’d rather commune with the internet than try to figure out what cleaning agent will succeed in getting rid of #*$(*$ from the wall and *#$*9 from the floor. The amount of progress I can make is too minuscule to care.

Any visitor to my home will be disgusted and uncomfortable whether I put in X hours, X^2 hours, or X^3 hours. It will never be enough.

I do not want to go to sleep tonight. I don’t want to give up on today. The odds of success for tomorrow are bleak. I cannot admit defeat for today. What there’s nothing…nothing I can do.