June 2004

Michael wrote up an entry about all the movies he saw on Day 2 and Day 3 of the Boston International Film Festival. I think he was rather generous in his feedback of “The Hillz”, a movie that Paris Hilton showcases her (surprise!) terrible (or lack thereof) acting skills.

A long time ago (September 17, 2001) I exchanged email with Bob Stein about accepting PayPal payments for his VisiBone products. He just sent me an email to let me know that they are now able to accept orders via PayPal. I’m impressed he saved my email. I have a few of their HTML and CSS foldouts that are quite nifty and useful.

The Boston International Film Festival began today with festivities and films at the John Hancock Hall. David Baeumler, the husband of Sandy, my best pal throughout high school, had his “I Cannot Understand You” short film chosen for the festival. It’s screening Friday, June 25th 12:30-12:36pm. They’re in Norway for the summer so he gave me his all-access passes. Starting tonight I saw some great films including the feature length “Guarding Eddy“, a very heartfelt (yet not at all cheesy) movie about a sassy NBA rookie and Eddy, the 18 year-old kid with mental disorders that he befriends. The lead actor/producer, Brian Presley (who plays Eddy) and actor Kiko Ellsworth were at the screening and took questions from the audience — mostly other film people who asked great questions. They are daytime soap actors most of the time and put the film together based on someone that Brian got to know in Los Angeles. Great film … highly recommended! Tickets are still available for a whole bunch of films being shown through Sunday night.

(OK, maybe The Smiths’ tune didn’t go quite like that.)

As I was about to log in to my meetup.com account, I noticed the link on their homepage announcing “Transcriptionists, Hyderabad, India meeting now!” I guess everyone needs a meetup. There are 228 transcriptionists around the world who have signed up to meet through meetup.com. Hyderabad has the largest group with 50 members. I wonder what they talk about.

In my senior year of high school in 1991 (Scribner, Nebraska) I was in most every activity club, including FBLA — Future Business Leaders of America. Each Spring we attended the state convention and participated in various “competitions” including transcription. Somehow I managed to get signed up for that one. So, I took the test and placed number two. The winner of each competition advanced to the national convention/competition that was taking place in Anaheim, California that summer. Apparently the person who came in ahead of me had also won another competition and chose that one over transcription for the national competition. So, there I was with an opportunity to travel West for the first time. I don’t remember all the details but I think the FBLA group helped raise some money to send me. My advisor wasn’t able to go so another group adopted me. I basically spent the entire week hanging out by myself in Anaheim and Disneyworld except when I had to participate in group events and the test itself. I bought my first Smith’s CD, “Louder Than Bombs“, at a local used CD store. It was an amusing way to get to California.

Marche Movenpick at the Prudential Center in Boston has been offering free WiFi for a few months and I finally had a chance to try it out. I’m typing this down at Caveau, their cozy wine bar/bistro and it reaches here, too. Fun!

Seems hard to believe that it was just a year ago that Howard Dean made his official announcement that he was running for the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. I remember sitting at my desk at Nokia watching the video of the speech he gave in Burlington, VT to a huge crowd of supporters. It was exciting — the first time I ever felt inspired to get involved in politics. As much as John Kerry is not really all that inspiring, I do not want to share my birthday (inauguration day) with George Bush next year!

I don’t know Bob, but he sure took some excellent photos recently of George’s Island. I haven’t been there in several years. I mentioned to j a few weeks ago that we should do some sort of blogger outing there sometime this summer. It’s a fun area to wander around in, especially the underground tunnels.

Since most everyone I know already has a Gmail account, I decided to post an ad on (Boston) Craig’s List this morning in the free category to get rid of my 12 lingering invites. Several people are posting ads charging for Gmail account invites. Too funny. I received numerous emails from people delighted that I was giving them away for free. Several people told me their sob stories dealing with Hotmail. Another person turned out to be a friend of the human I more or less moved to Boston for ten years ago. I posted the ad with an anonymous CL email address so it turned out to be an amusing surprise for both of us. Someone else recognized my last name and asked me if I’m from Dracut. I’ve heard there’s another Susan Kaup in the Boston area but we haven’t crossed paths yet.

I’m thinking it might be fun to have a dinner party/outing with everyone I’ve given Gmail invites to. Some people are pals who I sent invites to directly and then the rest are random people who responded to the ad on Craig’s List. Might be fun!

Update 6/23/04: I gave away that last batch of invites and now I’ve got more. So, if you still don’t have a Gmail account and you want one, send me a note.

UPDATE: I have no more Gmail invites.

I have twelve spare Gmail invites available. It seems like most of my friends have one by now. If you want one, let me know. And in case you have been living under a rock the last month or so, Gmail is Google’s new webmail service. It’s got a nifty interface and uses Google’s search technology. I especially like how it groups related emails into a conversation. And the 1000 megabytes of storage is nice, too. I’ve moved all my mailing list subscriptions to it, etc. They do a good job of addressing privacy concerns, too.

The Automatic Mix Tape Generator over at Tiny Mix Tapes came in very handy last night while putting together “Instant Pleasure”, an iTunes playlist named after the sassy Rufus Wainwright tune. And speaking of Rufus, how did I manage to overlook his music until last weekend? He’s spectacular! I think Rufus and Rose Polenzani should sing a duet together.