Day 36: 135 <-- official 5-week weight

Hmm. Either I've plateaued (yikes, there's that word again), or I am cheating too much. Well, since I'm not really too overweight, I guess I'm doing fine. So that handful of M&Ms was ok ... both days?

I have been giving blood on-and-off for a while, when I remember and when I have time. Well, this time I tried donating platelettes and red blood cells. You get hooked up to a machine that takes your blood out, separates the platelettes out and puts them into a bag (like the whole blood), then puts the rest back into your arm. It's fascinating, as long as you don't think that it's putting blood back into your body that has been outside of it!!

It pumps out some, and then as that gets full, it pumps back in. When it goes back in, it is mixed with some anti-coagulant, so things don't get gummed up. I kept getting a tingling sensation on my lips when that happened. Not like light-headed, but a smaller sensation. Not bad, but weird. I made an appointment to do it again, as long as I have time I'll do it again. It takes a little longer, but not too bad.

Still job hunting. Heard of another position, the guy was commuting from Indianapolis, IN; turned in his resignation yesterday.

Trying to setup all my computers on Windows XP. I got 2 running so far, one of them now has the DSL connection -- a different computer than the DSL was on before. After removing the DSL, the main computer has gotten very flaky, I can't even bring up an explorer window. I guess it was during the uninstall. I guess that puts that computer at the top of the list for a new OS, eh?

Also, the laptop has a Synaptic PS/2 Touchpad on it, and it kept locking up. I noticed that it would always hang while I was moving the mouse, so I downloaded a new mouse driver from Synaptic, and it has been working like a champ since. I was getting worried about it.

So, now I have 2 computers that are bugging me -- only 30 days until you must activate Windows XP. Why does Microsoft do this? Isn't it enough to buy the software and type in the stupid 351-digit code, now it has to connect to the home base. What do you think they're recording? IP Addresses? Which keys have "phoned home"? Makes me want to find a crack to eliminate the activation. I guess that would be technically illegal, since you would be "modifying" the code, which is specifically prohibited in the license agreement.

Grrr!