Youngsters’ Mom-Flicks

The Parent Trap (Brian Keith, Maureen O’Hara, Hayley Mills, 1961; Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid, 1998)

Old favorite about sisters being reared apart by their divorced parents—sisters who are now plotting feverishly to haul the grown-ups back before the preacher-man!

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Here’s the long story:

Windstream had a major equipment failure yesterday (5/7) at their central office. All DSL users (Windstream and ours) went down for over an hour.

Windstream’s equipment was swapped out and all customers except for ours were restored at some point yesterday. We continued to work with them to track down the problem.

Late this afternoon (5/8), it was discovered that the new Windstream replacement equipment we were connected to was configured differently than the original equipment.

One simple command on our Cisco router corrected the errors our DS3 line was taking in Little Rock. Windstream then bounced the circuit up and down (on/off) and the problem was resolved.

In the end, we know the past day and a half has been frustrating not having access to the Internet. We know you have a choice when it comes to Internet service and appreciate your support going forward.

A 30+ hour outage equates to 1/24th of your monthly service. If you would like a refund, take your monthly DSL bill and divide it by 24 to get your refund amount. Send an email to billing@semo.net with the amount of your calculated refund. Billing will verify the amount and apply it to your upcoming bill.

With celebration that DSL is working again,
Brian

Mother’s Day is Sunday May 11, 2008!

The movies have been making a big deal of Mom for ages, since well before James Cagney’s psychopathic Cody Jarrett went stark-raving bonkers in the prison mess hall on learning his beloved, but homicidal, mother had bought it in the back (White Heat, 1949)…

In the run-up to Mother’s Day weekend, I’ve put together a list of noteworthy films from yesteryear that all have one thing in common: At least one compelling mother(ing) character, or a strong motherhood theme.

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Rumors have AT&T on track to sell their product for $100.

Sony Releases - Wallet/Camera Combo

This new camera is Sony’s smallest yet.

IsAndBe.com - Happy Mother’s Day eCard

Ben (9 years old) and Isaac (10 years old) have been friends since before they could walk and have now teamed up to create a new cartoon eCard series. Their first release is a “Happy Mother’s Day” eCard which is a perfect glimpse of what a mother’s life can be when she has kids running around. To support these boys and their hard work, please send this link on to as many friends as possible…and especially your mother.

The boys have already written the script for their next cartoon…a “Happy Birthday Surprise!”

Now This Is A Display!

9xMedia has created the ultimate Family Room TV Experience!

Now that’s what I call Sweet!

I wish I had been called, because I would have greatly differed with the whopping 70% of my grumpy countrymen. And, should the unsuspecting pollster have stayed on the line long enough, I would have had this to say:

Who lets their mood be determined by such a thing? If I based my mood on something as ambiguous as the state of the country, I might never rise from my covers in the morning. What kind of emotional measuring stick is that?

Here’s the deal: Life has problems. If I focus on problems, I am anxious, which the dictionary defines as full of mental distress or uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune; greatly worried and afraid. Spending any time whatsoever being greatly worried and afraid is a colossal waste of precious time and it produces nothing good. It does produce, I suppose, a very sour mood. A sour mood isn’t going to change gas prices or the situation in Iraq.

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Click on it, enjoy and then support their hard work by forwarding it on to all your friends…and especially your Mother!

“Color Her World with Fragrance”

promotion: Purchase 1 bottle of fragrance, and get a second of your choice for half price!

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What is it about scent that stirs the heart, the imagination, the deepest memory of man and woman?

Well, since Mother’s Day is right around the corner, let’s save that one for the mind-body experts at Johns Hopkins, while we get right down to all you need to know about Geriann Fowler’s friendly neighborhood fragrance haven, The Scent Shop!

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Moom and I had a screamingly funny time on the trail, sailing along the untried road in utter darkness during an unexpected thunderstorm. “You do have your cell phone, don’t you?” she asked, in seriousness. “Yes,” I answered. “But do we even know where we are, I mean, exactly? Will the phone even get a signal out here? And how would we tell anyone where we are, when we can’t see anything but some sort of crops all over the place?”

We both burst out laughing, and pressed on, windshield wipers on “high”. Better to find Malden than curse the dark.

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This is a story about how mothers stay mothers forever, no matter how old their children get, how far those children have traveled, or how capable those children might have proven to be in taking care of themselves over the years.

It’s a brief story of my dear sainted mother, Lillian E. Thompson (1926-2002), who managed the Poplar Bluff city bus company for years until her retirement in 1996. It’s a tale that illustrates how that “lioness instinct” never dies—at least if you have a child you consider something of an egghead with little in the way of practical, real-world savvy. You want to protect that child with all you have—even if she’s been around the world and experienced earthquakes and terrorist bomb threats…Even if you’re 74 and on oxygen!

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The really swell thing is that when you give yourself a little time to plan, you don’t have to rush to the smell-good section of the nearest five-and-dime before church that Sunday, in the hope of seizing onto whatever little cheesy French knock-off doesn’t scream, “TOTAL ABSENCE OF CLASS OVER HERE!!!” Because when you couple that kind of “inspiration” with a supermarket corsage, and a hasty blue-plate special at the only roadside greasy-spoon with any seating left in the county, you’re setting yourself up for tragedy of ancient Greek proportions.

I’ve been tooling about the Internet and coming across some really neat websites for Mother’s day ideas. Here’s a sampling of what I found…

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