Aarrgghh! My kingdom for a made free throw!!

I just rebooted my PC and when Trillian came back up, SmarterChild was back online! Unfortunately, when I asked it a question, this is the response I got:

"I'm sorry. I'm currently undergoing maintenance. Please check back in a little while. They'll be done fixing my brain shortly."

I'm going to try that one during my next meeting!

I'd have lots of interesting pictures to show you of snow-covered Chicagoland if I had a cell phone with an embedded camera. Unfortunately, I do not. Yet.

Pre-snow, we took the kids to see Agent Cody Banks this weekend. If you have grade-school kids, this is a great movie for them. Both of our kids loved it, although seven-year old Brent covered his eyes at the end when Frankie Muniz and Hilary Duff kissed.

I enjoyed it, too, especially because it was fun trying to spot all of the gadgets and technology. The plot revolves around an "evil genius" that wants to sneak metal-guidance-system-eating nanobots into American military installations via ice cubes and Cody Banks has to stop them. To do this, the CIA gives him a souped-up iPod that can crack electronic security codes and doubles as a winch, sunglasses with embedded binoculars, and a Danger Sidekick that also handles holographic communications. The most interesting part is when you see Segways being used all over CIA headquarters. Kids and grown-ups in the audience all said, "Cool" when they first came on screen.

I was looking at the soundtrack on Amazon's site when I noticed they were asking me questions. I was given three questions related to product categories on their site, and they gave me a nickel for each correct answer. The quiz is just below the "customers who bought this title also bought" section, and even now when I go back I see more questions worth more nickels. When did this start? It definitely caught my attention, though, and even though the answers are pretty obvious, it is fulfilling its purpose of making me more aware of the breadth and depth of their inventory. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be customized to my purchases, because I really don't care how many fishing magazines they offer.

Anyway, I'm sorry things have been a bit slow around here lately, but it's been busy everywhere else in my life. I'll try to get back on track with posting this week. And hooray for e-filing your taxes!