Sorta.

As the little seal to the left suggests, PayPal.com sent USBank.com some nickels [astonishingly, no one died] and I got the two sites talking to each other; so that's good news. Of course, while I'm still waiting for up to a couple weeks to get a Visa from USBank.com, I'm now also waiting up to a month to get a MasterCard from PayPal.com. But that's kinda secondary: I can dump cash down into the bank and physically walk in to get it; more usefully, I can grab stuff online anywhere accepting PayPal, which happens to be among my criteria for dealing with things online already.

So, for example, I already hit TotallyWicked-ELiquid.com to pick up a 5pack of extended batteries and a 5bay charger, since the batteries for my 510 are all about six months old now, and incapable of lasting more than about half an hour each. So those are in the mail, or something.

If there's a downside to electronic cigarettes, it's that, to date, you can't really hit 7Eleven to get more. Then again, you can hit 7Eleven to grab organic cigarettes; so I've got publicly unsmokable stuff for the downtime while I'm recharging doomed batteries here.

Of course, the extended batteries are already a bit doomed. They won't fit in the chargingcase, so that's likely to become annoying. The current hypothesis is that five of the things, each lasting two or three hours or more, should last until I can get somewhere to recharge them. And, since the charger is actually more portable than my netbook [smaller, anyway], I'm not expecting too many problems with charging four of them in a restaurant next to the Asus while I'm doing whatever it is that I do. Plus, I've still got the case and a couple halfassed standard batteries, and a good idea where to find 7Eleven. So it should all work out.

Of course, yesterday sucked a little. I wound up lurking at VillageInn with a pair of substandard batteries while I'm waiting for the new stuff. And I was WiFied mostly to twitter.com, though I was also randomly looking through modern skateboards online. Mostly because I can make boards through zazzle.com, though I really haven't started on that yet. Mostly I haven't started because I'm not sure what the hell to put on a board. The three I currently have are a SantaCruz longboard which is simply black [I airbrushed over whatever it came with, once that started getting a little scuffed], another, standard Cruz with just their logo, and a Birdhouse with a fairly accurate, if coincidental, sketch of Zombi on it. But that's me. So, while a board with the Wasted Logo is a bit duh, I'm not sure what sort of graphics to put on boards: simple seems simple, and complex seems...really kinda targeted. So I've been looking at what other people and companies do, trying to work out the level of complexity people are into.

Mostly, I've noticed that people are really kinda lazy out there. Though a few boards I've seen were pretty cool. They're just in the minority. For now.

Anyway. Getting a headache [it was actually warmish yesterday, and therefore sunny], I tried to bug out, only to hit the wrong damned thing while shutting down the netbook and getting trapped into an hour of WindozeXP installing fourteen updates. Which I'd like to understand. The netbook's less than a year old. XP's...many years old. I could in theory have Windoze7 on this thing. So...what in hell is still unfinished about XP that I'd need fourteen updates I'd never heard of when I last used the netbook a couple days ago; that's what I wanna know.

So now I'm sitting there, with a headache, with electronic cigarettes draining faster than the case can charge them, not really wanting to go out into the sun for a real cigarette while leaving an updating netbook plugged in, and furthermore no longer able to WiFi to anything to see what's going on in the world. Until I got a stupid idea and WiFied in through the PSP to see the 'net at 480*270 or so. Yeah: my smartphone isn't that smart; it lacks WiFi; and I'm not into paying however many dollars per megabyte to get online through Verizon.

The good news, I suppose, is that I was wrong about VillageInn neglecting to charge me for coffee as long as I'm out of there before the graveyard shift ends: this was at four in the afternoon, and they still didn't charge me. If that doesn't sound incredible yet, they in this case were the diurnal general manager. That's unknown in nature. The manager by definition sucks; the general manager, onsite when the sun's out, sucks doubly. Not this time.

The coffee still sucks. But there's nothing to be done about that. Coffee at VillageInn—and I've tested this from DuhMoines to Cheyenne—somehow, magically, always tastes like warmish water filtred through limestone. It's liquid chalk. It's weird.

If you're wondering why I'd know what limestone tastes like, then you're not a palaeontologist. The easiest way to ascertain composition, especially if you're colourblind, is to see what a rock tastes like. Stop staring; it's not that weird.

Speaking of skateboards: I finally saw something I've been watching for, but never quite expected to see. I didn't pick it up, but Kohl's had a little 5pack of TechDeck fingerboards from HookUps. Mostly, I didn't pick it up because it was of course the boringly tame stuff. Some of the TShirts I've got from them might not be strictly legal in the US. So, at least TechDeck are thinking toward scaring boring people; it's a start.

Not too much news on the anticipated site update, though I'm really, really thinking about m.gremlin.net after seeing things at 480*270 yesterday. I guess I've still got a couple weeks to work out how exactly things should look, and get various browsers to believe the coding. So, really, I'm working on designing two sites, since the stuff I've got plotted just for gremlin.net is already too large to work on a PSP or a phone; m.gremlin.net might not be ready at the end of the year.

I think that's about all I've got for now. More later....

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