Net Crimes & Misdemeanors

Our dryer started acting wonky last weekend. It would stop in the middle of a cycle and I would have to restart it. It took forever to dry anything. We've had the washer and dryer the entire seven years we've been here and the girls who owned the house before us had bought them new two years previous to that. Since the average lifespan is 8-10 years, we decided to head to Sears to replace the both of them. Surprisingly, the appliance dept was empty of customers. I thought there were would be more people buying for Christmas. Joyce, our saleperson, was nice, but had blue contacts with some weird shape for her iris. It was disconcerting and I tried not to stare at her. She was energetic and showed us some options. We knew we needed a larger size to handle king-size comforters/bedspreads, so that narrowed the field down. Since we wanted something that would last well, we settled on a Kenmore White w/Black Kenmore Elite 3.8 cu. ft. HE3 King Size Capacity Plus Front Load Washer and...

The transfer to the new server should be done by tonight. I will then post new info tomorrow morning. Cross your fingers!

The Net Crimes web site will be moving to a new server over the weekend, so you may experience a "not found" or similar error when trying to access the site or this blog.

Earlier this month I had to fly to Minneapolis. Thank goodness it was a direct flight from Boston and on both flights no one sat in the middle seat, so I had room to breathe. When we landed, it was snowing pretty good, and it was cold. Brrr. Took the Super Shuttle from the Minneapolis airport to the Hyatt Regency downtown. Beautiful hotel, right on the Nicolett Mall. Since I have a "rewards" card with just about every hotel chain, I got an extra nice room on the "rewards" floor - the 21st floor. King-size bed with feather topper, feather pillows, granite bathroom floor and sink, larger than normal sized room with a huge picture window overlooking the Nicolett Mall. Unpacked, called home, then freshened up to meet a writing friend D.S. Goodman (aka Dan). I've known him online for years - he was around during the whole Woodside debacle. At around 6 pm, headed down to the lobby to find it filled with women carolers dressed up in bright red robes, singing Christmas...

The week of November 7th, I spent several days giving lectures to students, teachers, local law enforcement and parents about cyberbullying and online predators. It was the first time I'd given a lecture to students under the age of 18 (I've done lectures for college kids for a couple of years now). And it was an experience, LOL! The first morning was an assembly of over 500 kids in 7th-12th grades. They were boisterous (I remember being a teen), but a good audience. They were quiet at times during my PowerPoint presentation, especially when I showed them why it wasn't a good idea to put too much info in their profiles and when I showed examples of cyberbullying from recent news stories. I did get some questions, but not as many as I'd hoped. I had some kids come up to me afterwards to ask questions privately and overall it was good. The kids love the KTD logo and seemed happy to find that there is a web site they can go to for info and for help if they need it. That af...