Update: I got an e-mail from the Google ad team asking me to remove the first paragraph of this entry because it was encouraging people to click on ads and not likely to gain customers for advertisers. I can see their point, but was surprised at the e-mail nonetheless. It’s good to see them watching […]

Technorati now has user profiles. This post is to let them know I own this blog so it can be displayed on my Technorati Profile. They keep adding new features but it’s a mystery how they’re supporting their efforts. Maybe they’re just doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. Maybe they’re demonstrating their […]

Those who face away from their cubicle or office entrance are at a distinct disadvantage because they don’t know when someone is behind them. Unexpected intrusions can be both startling and annoying, or even fatal. A disgruntled coworker could whack you with a lead pipe and you wouldn’t even know it was coming. To prevent […]

My brother sent me a link to a guide separating reality from myth regarding Utah. Utah is number one in Jello consumption, anti-depressant use (both twice the national average), piano ownership, (five times the national average), birth rate, personal bankruptcies, literacy, computers per capita and household size. Utah is dead last in families headed by […]

Mars will be closer than it has been in 60,000 years at the end of August.

Meredith wrote about seeing the word myriad used incorrectly by people who should know better. I have used it in two posts, but I was happy to find I used it correctly. The site she linked to, webgrammar.com, doesn’t have much in the way of content, but there are a myriad of great links.

I couldn’t see officer, there was a pair of underpants on my face. I couldn’t think of a good one-liner, so here are five to choose from. You can vote on them if you’d like, or suggest better ones. 5. Turns out he was actually driving behind a Daewoo. 4. The owner of the underpants […]

I have called more customer service numbers than I would care to count, for a myriad of different reasons, and the automated phone system has yet to resolve a single issue. Instead, the menus are an impediment, making me feel like a mouse in a maze. I’m not even rewarded with cheese when I find […]

The Word Detective (via) answers specific questions about the origin of words and the Online Etymology Dictionary provides the origin of everyday words. According to the dictionary, crap doesn’t come from Thomas Crapper, despite folk etymology insistence.

Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, says marriage may tame geniuses. Creative genius and crime express themselves early in men but both are turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children, a study says. The data remarkably concur with the brutal observation made […]

Your job, should you choose to accept, is to determine which pictures are photos and which are computer generated images. I got eight out of ten right.

Those with a Yahoo Mail account who want to save their e-mails but still remain under the quota are in luck. The Yahoo Mail Archiver allows you to download all your e-mail from the server to store it locally. I wonder if the guy who wrote the tool has all the e-mail sent to him […]

There was a perfect man who met a perfect woman. After a perfect courtship, they had a perfect wedding. Their life together was, of course, perfect. One snowy, stormy Christmas Eve the perfect couple was driving along a winding road when they noticed someone at the roadside in distress. Being the perfect couple, they stopped […]

I have been fortunate to work with some exceptional people, but I didn’t realize just how fortunate until I read a few experiences at iWorkWithFools.com. I thank my lucky stars I don’t have any stories of my own to submit. At least people have a place to vent and perhaps discover that their co-workers aren’t […]

An epidemic of gargantuan proportions has swept Movable Type blogs everywhere. The symptom is the use of non-existent anchors in their permanent links. An anchor (text after a # in the URL) is only needed if there is a corresponding target. If your permanent links go to a page with more than one entry on […]

Can you believe that 7% of Norwegians wear the same undies for a week? The study also found that single men are more likely to wear clean underpants than men in a relationship. My theory is that guys in relationships aren’t as concerned about impressing girls with their pleasant aroma as single guys.

A study of the musical preferences and personality traits of 3500 individuals suggests that you are what you listen to. This quote from the article is sure to please Levi: “I’ve always believed that people’s musical taste says a lot about them. If you like Avril Lavigne, for example, you probably need to have your […]

A new program can distinguish between male and female authors with 80% accuracy. The article explains that males usually write about inanimate objects while girls write more about relationships and people. That knowledge enabled them to use the pronouns to help determine the author’s gender. I wonder how hard it would be to trick the […]

I’ve been using Opera for a long time (over two years I believe) but as of today I am a registered customer. I decided they deserve my support and bought a license for Linux and Windows. The immediate benefit is that I no longer have to see the ads, but I was used to them, […]

I’ve been searching for a good credit reporting service and found Clear Credit. The site was neat and professional-looking, and their offer for a free three-agency credit report seemed too good to be true. The only catch I could find was that you had to pay $7.95 for each disputed item on your report. I […]

I overheard someone say “You’re breaking up” in a cell phone conversation and my overactive imagination began to churn. What if the person on the other end thought they had said “We’re breaking up?” A bad cell phone connection could be the end of a wonderful relationship and that would be a pity. Don’t underestimate […]

Fireworks, barbecues, and vacations with friends and family are all good things, but with all the fun it’s easy for me to forget the reason for today’s holiday. An editorial in the Boston Globe provided a welcome reminder with The Declaration of Independence.

On my way to work I saw a semi with G.O.D written in huge letters across the side of the trailer and 1800dialgod.com below. My curiosity was peaked. At first I thought it might have something to do with Bruce Almighty. It didn’t make much sense, but I’d read about the woman suing the producers […]

For the past year I’ve been a customer of Hughes network’s DirecPC, a satellite internet service. The way it works is fairly simple; you have a satellite dish installed on your roof and a wire from the dish goes to your computer. Network traffic from your computer goes through the dish and into the sky. […]

As many of you know I use the exclamation mark sparingly and even wrote an essay on the subject to encourage others to do the same, but I’ve made a discovery. I happened upon a list of punctuation marks in the dictionary and instead of ‘exclamation mark’ it had ‘exclamation point.’ Baffling, I know. A […]