How will you use technology or the Internet to help you plan and prepare this year’s Thanksgiving feast?
Sponsored by LifeScoop: Bringing You Tips for a Connected Lifestyle.

Our family tradition is to go have dinner with Princess Thunderstorm's (Cimmy's) family.  This year, all the siblings are coming, that is, my brothers-in-law.  Usually it was just Cimmy, myself, Trinity, my mother-in-law, and my father-in-law.  One of my brothers-in-law suggested that everyone contribute some dishes, to share the effort and cost.  So we have been coordinating our plans by e-mail, and sometimes by telephone.

This morning, I sent my mother-in-law our final list.

What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.)

I chose to take a drama class to fulfill an English requirement.  I obtained permission to bypass the intro class and take the main one, which I enjoyed immensely. 

jaklumen added an entry about Daily: Reflect on 5 things for which I'm grateful.:

Yesterday:

1. Family Night with my folks last night
2. Leftover pozole that was still good (having been frozen) with fresh veggie fixings for dinner last night before #1, same place
3. A gentle long-time dentist that makes getting cavities filled smooth and easy
4. A playground near the dental clinic to keep my son occupied
5. House brand pull-up pants at the grocery store

Today:

1. Daughter got to the school bus on time
2. Wife’s PDA alarms are synchronized to my computer
2a. Wife could therefore sleep a little longer before an appointment
3. My children will happily eat fruits and vegetables
3a. My son is munching on an apple right now
4. Having my father as a (backup) ride to appointments
5. Cell phones, when used sparingly. Therefore pay-as-you-go works for us.

jaklumen added an entry about learn more about linux:

I found out Freespace 2 was released as open source some time ago. I had two of the discs, but since I did not have the first and all were unpatched, I purchased it cheaply from Good Ol’ Games. After some hours of frustration, I got it installed.

The thing I am learning about Linux gaming is that there is room for independent developers. It’s true there’s still a lot of clones and ports of older games (including open source game engine alternatives), but there are a few new games coming out from indie developers.

jaklumen added an entry about Become less afraid of failure and allow myself the room to make mistakes:

A few days ago I found something connected to a bad habit I’m trying to give up. Rather than get rid of it right away, I indulged. I decided afterwards, however, to destroy it, and I remembered that now, to the best of my knowledge, there was no more leftovers connected to that vice.

Better to look towards the positive aspects of an experience.

jaklumen added an entry about lose weight / get in shape:

353 lbs., which is a loss of about 10 lbs., or close to the weight I was last summer.

What are the can’t–live–without things on your web homepage?

Sponsored by Yahoo!

What's that?

Oh, I know what a homepage is and all that.  I just can't tell you how it could possibly be that important to me.  I was conditioned long ago not to bathe in the spotlight, which is what homepages seem to me, or, at least, what they used to be.  I understand Yahoo's idea is to allow a user to gather things together that matter the most to someone.

Well, I will point you to something I created recently:

J1 + J2 = S1 + S2 Pratt Family

Mostrecent.net is something that was created by Ian Smith, founder and creator of Joe's Goals, a simple goal tracker.  He describes Most Recent thus:

"Most Recent is a tool I created to make it easy to build news page along the lines of the Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Daily Beast, etc. Simply create a page page, collect links you care about, publish to mostrecent.net"

And quite simply, I just set up mine to make it easy for my friends and family that are a little less than tech-savvy or even tech-literate to be able to just Favorite/Bookmark one site to keep up with what our family is doing.  I told my father, "You don't have to look at all the links-- you can choose whichever ones you want.  Instead of Favoriting them all, you can just Favorite this one."

Feel free to stop here-- thus ends the short answer.  If you are bored, however, read on:

See, someone mentions "homepage", and I'm transported back to the mid 1990's, when the tools were still pretty primitive, and people used GeoCities or FrontPage or some other cookie-cutter template program.  But the options have grown SO much since then!

I'm not much for getting news on a homepage.  I use my e-mail client to track RSS feeds and such, and that cuts down clutter for me.  I blog here, but keeping in touch with friends and family range between e-mail correspondence and social networking.  And speaking of social networking, well, MySpace was the last site I saw that actually encouraged a "homepage" format, although the formatting is very messy and few have tamed it to fit quality standards of a good web designer.

By the way, Yahoo, I can't help but point out your 360 project failed, hard.  And you had a seedy underbelly long before Craigslist or Adult Friend Finder came along.

Actually, though, I know Daisy writes the entries, and the sponsor does not dictate to her what she writes.  So I am curious as to what inspired this one.

I apologize for the poor quality of the last two photos.

New spice rack project (before)

Spice rack after

Spice rack finished