When I was working at Friendly’s one summer, I came in to work and things were pretty slow. The store manager was in his office and several other people were crowding around him, staring intently at a strange looking poster. I managed to break the gaze of someone and asked what it was all about […]

I’ve often said it’s not a matter of if your hard drive will fail, but when, so following that logic, if your home computer has information that you don’t want to lose, it’s wise to back it up. My first backup solution was to copy the files I wanted to save to my web server, […]

My home theater is not what you’d call impressive or up-to-date. In fact, the TV is more than 20 years old, I bought the stereo 10 years ago and the CD reading laser has long since burnt out (but the speakers still work) and the DVD player is made by Daewoo (you know, the same […]

I’m not an expert mechanic, but I know enough about cars to get myself in trouble. I found this list of 10 automotive secrets interesting, but I wouldn’t consider many of them secrets, just handy tips and things to be aware of. In fact, I don’t think any of them are all that earth-shattering, but […]

The recent successful landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery reminded me of the Challenger tragedy. I was young at the time, but I have always been impressed by Ronald Reagan’s speech in honor of those who had died, especially the last paragraph. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in […]

Retro crush has a list of the 50 coolest song parts, meaning the 50 songs that contain cool segments. There are images of all the album covers as well as MP3s of all the segments, but they’re very low quality. At least they give you an idea of how they sound. I’ve always liked the […]

According to a study, close friends, as opposed to family, make people live longer. “The reasons are not entirely clear. Friends and confidantes might help with coping in times of stress and difficulty, the team suggests. They might also encourage healthy behaviours, such as seeking help for new medical symptoms.” Of course this study was […]

I just heard about Protopage, which is a customizable desktop of sticky notes. You can move, resize and add links or text to the notes and then save it and come back later. They’re promoting it as a start page, and it’s actually not a bad idea. It has the date and a little clock […]

I wasn’t very pleased with the default dashboard in WordPress 1.5, so I’m using the old one I created, with several improvements. Here’s a thumbnail (click on it to see the full screenshot). Main Features Loads much faster than the default dashboard. Displays the last 10 comments, the last 10 posts, the top 10 most […]

I just found out about an open challenge to prove anything paranormal (their FAQ has a definition of what they consider paranormal) and receive one million dollars. The offer was originally made in 1964, but it was only for $1,000 and has since grown to $1,000,000. So far, no one has ever made it through […]

I received a submission for my trivia list stating that the phrase, “What goes around comes around” originally appeared in the Tao Te Cheng. I was a bit skeptical so I did some research. I found three different translations of it and none of them had the phrase. I responded with the links to the […]

I’ve updated the two plugins I mentioned in yesterday’s post to work with 1.5, in case anyone is interested in using them. The first one is the dashboard replacement. Some people have complained that it takes too long to load the entries from other sites. I agree, and I also like to see more information […]

I’ve been using version 1.2 of WordPress while the rest of the world forged on without me, so I finally made the plunge and upgraded. The reason I had been holding back was because I had made oodles of changes to the actual code, meaning when I upgraded I would have to either merge my […]

I laughed out loud when I read today’s (well, not really today’s. 11 August 1994) Calvin & Hobbes comic. That, my friends, is comedy gold.

I just ran across this site that has photos of celebrities when they were young. Some of them are very easy to recognize, while others are hard to tell. It would be nice to have a current photo of the celebrity to compare them. (via presurfer)

I keep lists of things to do, but they’ve often been spread all over the place. I’ve used a text file for some items, a blog with several entries for a few lists and another blog with draft entries. I decided to combine those lists and began transferring them all over to Backpack, a slick […]

I’ve heard from several different people that the Great Wall of China was the only man-made object visible from space. I heard it so many times that I became convinced of its veracity, and having not had the opportunity to take a jaunt into space, I had no way of verifying it. I had never […]

One of the reasons I like country music is because of the stories the songs tell. For instance, in Tim McGraw’s “Grown Men Don’t Cry” I was intrigued that he sang about his Dad being a slave to his job and not being around. I knew that McGraw’s Dad was a baseball player and figured […]

When did people start using last names? Things started out with Adam and Eve and then Cain and Abel, so there was really no confusion at first. Then there were people like Moses, Abraham and Noah, all of whom had no last names that I know of. We even got to the philosophers like Aristotle […]

I’m not a big fan of bottled water and I rarely buy it, but I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought either. Tom Standage on the other hand, who happens to be technology editor for The Economist, has given it a great deal of thought. In his New York times article he writes […]

As you’ve probably figured out, I love maps. I loved Topofusion when I first heard about it, I was ecstatic when Google released Google Maps, and then Keyhole which later became Google Earth. It’s just amazing to me that we can see almost anywhere in the US (and more and more areas around the world). […]