Name that Bug!

It took us a long time to realize these were NOT hummingbirds. They act like hummingbirds, they fly like hummingbirds, they eat like hummingbirds, they're almost as big as hummingbirds, but they're definitely not birds. I'm thinking some kind of moth. Do YOU know what they are? Do tell!

I've never seen one in quite this much detail, since they're VERY fast. Luckily my camera is a bit quicker than my own eye.

You can click the larger pictures for a bit more that Blogger cropped off.




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UPDATE! Do you think they look like this?

Turns out they're named..... (drumroll please) .... hummingbird moths! White-lined Sphinx Hummingbird Moth to be exact. Click the image to link the article I found after a 3-second google search.


Want to compare side by side? I do.



I think we have a match!

(this pdf article has another great photo)

Carol's Top Ten Firefox add-ons

I recently started using Firefox again as my default browser. One of the big reasons I favor it over MSIE is for the nifty add-ons. Here are my top ten favorite add-ons and built-in features:

1. Undo Last Closed Tab - Brilliant and self-explanatory. Perhaps the #1 reason I made the switch.
   
2. AdBlock Plus - Instead of ads on websites, I see pure white bliss. Pages load a lot faster too!
   
3. Search Bar - has a pulldown where you can choose to search Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, or a host of other common choices. Customizable. I use those three a lot!
   
4. Fast Dial - Maybe this is just a visual way to sort your favorite bookmarks, but I love it.
   
5. Foxmarks - Automatically sync your Firefox bookmarks on any computer that you own or use (also syncs Fast Dial)
6. Password storage - I just like that you can wait to answer the "would you like me to remember this password" question until you know for sure you typed the right one! FF asks the question in a drop down bar instead of a pop-up window, and you don't have to respond right away in order to proceed.
   
7. ForecastFox - Tiny, tidy current weather and forecast, subtly in your status bar. It would be even more perfect if it could detect what city I'm in when my laptop goes on a trip!
   
8. Yahoo Mail Notifier - the only reason I ever used the bulky Yahoo toolbar, this version takes only about a quarter-inch of real estate on your status bar.
   
9. Google Calendar Sync - whether or not you actively use Google Calendar, did you know you can use it to keep your Outlook calendars automatically synced across multiple computers? (this one isn't Firefox-specific, I'll admit)
   
10. Prompt/Ability to save all current tabs when you shut the program down.

What did I miss? Tell me your favorite features in the comment section...

The Big Read

I used to devour books like a starving bookworm. Other than Harry Potter, it's been an embarrassingly long while since I made time for a good book. But a friend of mine posted this, and I had fun remembering all the great books I used to read (and some that I was forced, err... encouraged, to read in school). There were quite a few that I feel like I probably read, but I don't remember for sure. That just goes to show how much I used to read, that I couldn't keep track of what I'd read and what I hadn't. Or maybe it goes to show what a spotty swiss-cheese memory I have. But I digress...

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list. How many have you read? Look at the list: Bold those you have read. Italicize those you intend to read. Underline the books you LOVE. (and Carol, don't mark the ones you don't remember whether you might have read them once upon a time).

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. 1984 - George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34. Emma - Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo