Aaron Ewer

Hooray for the home ice - Pittsburgh finally got their act together and beat the Red Wings last night. To hear the talking heads the win was all due to Sidney Crosby, this year’s “Boy Wonder,” who broke their scoreless streak and fired one into the net, giving the Penguins the momentum back to win the third game of this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The Penguin’s game winning goal was actually scored by a former Nashville  Predator, Adam Hall. WTG Adam! Miss you, buddy!

Let’s see if Pittsburgh can keep the wins coming when they meet up on Saturday night for Game 4.

Last weekend was a holiday for most people but I had to work all three days, so it wasn’t much of a holiday for me. I did donate to the veterans group selling poppies at the Kroger and I watched fireworks Sunday night courtesy of the lake’s water park, so I had a little bit of celebration. Didn’t get to take advantage of any of the Memorial Day sales at the stores - actually didn’t even get to read the newspaper to see what was on sale until yesterday.

So this weekend we’re going to go shopping and do all the honey-do list items that we can cram into two days. I’ve already checked the internet for discount coupons and my favorite site had some great deals. With the price of gas at $3.85 a gallon, we’re looking harder for ways to save money on other purchases and coupons are an easy way to save with just a little forethought.

We have to buy a baby gift for the new little nephew. Right off I found discount code promotions from Fisher Price, TikeTech, Safety 1st, Kiddopotamus, Evenflo and Kidsline and we’ll be giving that top priority on Saturday morning. The hospitals send new mothers home so quickly now that it is hardly worth ordering flowers for the mother, but I wanted to send something to my sister-in-law on the good chance that they will deliver the flowers this afternoon or at the latest tomorrow morning before she heads home with the baby.

We have to do a lot of yard work on Sunday - there’s little chance of rain and the weeds have taken over parts of the lawn. I’ll get some gardening and lawn care supplies and tackle those chores Sunday morning. If all goes well, I can be finished in time to throw some steaks on the grill and settle down for the NASCAR race in Dover with a couple of cold ones. Or, if the yard work takes too long, we’ll still have the steaks but we’ll cozy up on the couch to watch some movies to wind down.

Although I love the online music shopping that let’s you search for the specific title or artist that you want, it is not the same satisfaction of browsing through bins of CDs at the local music store.

Sometimes we pick up new releases for a good price at Wal-Mart, but if saving money is the highest criteria, I can buy used CDs from Amazon for pennies on the dollar.

For variety, about the only store with a big selection locally now is Best Buy, and they are only half the inventory of Tower Records used to carry. I really miss Tower Records - that was the best music shopping experience in town and no one has come close to offering the variety and depth of categories since they closed 2 years ago.

Several years ago I delved into GIF animation. It took a couple days to create some basic GIFs and practice using the settings, but even the very first project turned out nicely. So that’s encouraged me to jump in and give Flash animation a try.

There’s a company called AntsSoft that makes a Flash text animation software called SWF Text. AntsSoft make a variety of web design software including Flash slideshow software and Flash menu builders. So I can create several different effect using their software.

I was reading up on the SWF Text program and see that is has all the features that I think I need to create a great Flash intro for our family’s personal website. I want to do a montage of family photos with some special effects on the text and this program should do all that and more.

The details on using the Flash Text sound like anyone can quickly learn to use this software, with some very cool features like over 160 text animation effects and more than 40 background animations.

AntsSoft is offering a 30 day free trial on SWF Text, and since this is a holiday weekend, I have an extra day at home to work with it and make our new Flash intro. I’ll let you see how it turns out when I’m done!

Have been in discussions about the Asus minilaptop for several days. I can’t shake the idea that this mini is all we need for the kids to use. For the most part all they want is to surf the internet for homework help and to check or write emails. The Asus Eee PC is under $300 and looks like it can handle these simple tasks plus much more.

The Asus is only 9 inches wide with a 7 inch display, and it weighs about 2 pounds. It has a lot of features built in, including 2 GB of storage and WiFi. the software is Linux, with Open Office, Adobe Reader, Media Player, and Firefox all preinstalled. The battery life is reported to be almost 3 hours. It sounds perfect, so I went to the local Electronics Express last night and picked up one to test drive.