My Web 2.0

I'm really enjoying all of the new stuff coming out these days, especially from Google.

kottke's got a big post about Web 2.0. Google's use of Ajax is making their apps act like desktop programs, so there's no loss in function there.

I wrote a couple days ago about maybe caching webpages I want to save in Gmail. As the power of Google Desktop increases, including indexing my Gmail, that would put all of that info at my fingertips, as opposed to having to go search over at del.icio.us. And I just realized I could easily use the 'Email this' link in Bloglines to email pages to myself, putting 'tags' in the comments.

Nothing against del.icio.us. You know I love it. And, at the same time, last night I just found the greasemonkey script that changes Bloglines' 'Save this' to 'Post to del.icio.us'. So I have to decide which I'm going to use. Both will be an improvement over the current 'administration'. I'm leaning toward Gmail...

Anyway, it's all good... really. Fun days on the web. Google Talk is out today and I'm all excited and I don't even do IM or want to. Downloaded GAIM last night in preparation. Anybody want to do some Google Talk? Christine? ;-)

Tuesday

+ If you haven't read Ebert's Most Hated (via kottke), you're missing some good laughs. I've seen 5 of these films. I don't hate some of them. The Waterboy has a few funny moments (mostly tackles). Tommy Boy has a lot of funny moments. Stargate had some ok moments. I'm one of those people who likes The Usual Suspects. But Armageddon did totally stink. Anyway, the humor is in reading his reviews of the ones I stayed away from. How about you: how many have you seen? Your take?

+ Ooh. I really like the new Google Desktop Sidebar and Deskbar - a little bit like Quicksilver and Konfabulator. Had fun playing with it last night. I like the scrolling photos (guess I'm a sap). Fun .

+ In other U of I ranking news, they got #8 for party schools...

+ Mark the ZenPundit has had a number of interesting posts on ideas for reforming the State Department.

Friday, then Monday

Working on a project for Tom, so my extra computer time has been devoted to that. Posting should pick back up soon.

+ The Gaza pullout seems to be going well. I'm really glad. I'm hoping for good things, including getting a constitution in Iraq.

+ I haven't commented on Hunter S Thompson's suicide yet. Short version: sure, some people love him, but isn't the suicide a hint about the shortcomings of his 'philosophy' to anyone but me?

+ Latest computer thought: as much as I like del.icio.us, and I love it, emailing to my Gmail account the contents of webpages I would put in del.icio.us would make them more searchable, including within Google Desktop Search (new beta). Hmm...

Plus, as I look at the new beta, they're adding some Quicksilver-like functionality for launching applications. Looks like lots of cool new things over there. I, for one, welcome our Google overlords.

+ U.S. News & World Report's 2006 "America's Best Colleges"

The University of Iowa dropped two spots to No. 21 among the nation's top 50 public universities.

Cal Berkeley is No. 1. The Big Ten:

3. Michigan
8. Wisconsin
11. Illinois
14. Penn State
21. Iowa, Ohio State, Purdue
30. Indiana, Michigan State, Minnesota

Clemson dropped from 34 to 32. USC is 109.

Overlate post

I started this friday. Please ofrgive the tardiness.

+ I said it before, I'll say it again: Tom DeLay is toast.

+ SI's top 25 preseason college football rankings came yesterday. My (totally biased) comments:

1. USC - for real
2. Texas - whatever. I'll believe Mac Brown won't choke when I see it.
3. Florida - somebody up there fell in love with Chris Leak and Urban Meyer. What has Chris Leak proven so far? And Urban Meyer's good and all, but playing for the National Championship? I doubt it.
6. Miami - bleah
7. Oklahoma - ought to get more credit for their performance over the last 6 years. I'd rank 'em higher, like maybe 2nd.
12. Iowa - probably too low. The Big Ten's tough, with OSU, Michigan, and Purdue all picked to do well, and we play them all this year. Still, I bet we'll finish better than OSU or UM. The offense has come together well (providing we can keep at least one running back healthy!), and the defense will come together. Ferentz is a great coach who gets more out of his players than anyone. Consistency is the name of the game. We're 30-0 'over the past three years when leading after three quarters... 27-1 following a halftime lead.'
13 and on - who cares? ;-)

+ More TO punkness

+ Dude built furniture out of FedEx boxes and published a website about it. Got cease-and-desisted. Got help from the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society .

+ Here's a quick and dirty list of some of the pork in the new transportation bill. See anything that's mission critical?

On one hand, 12.2 B$ is only 4.2% of 284. On the other hand, 12.2 B$ is a lot of samoleans.

President Bush last year threatened to veto any bill costing more than $256 billion, but has since raised the ceiling to $284 billion.

The Repubs, in control of everything, are going nuts with their spending. I'll ask you again: What's worse than tax and spend? Cut taxes and spend.

+ UI a great buy

The Fiske Guide to Colleges 2006 has named the University of Iowa a "Best Buy" based on cost and educational quality. UI is one of 17 public and 28 private colleges to receive the title.

Thursday's (post/ed) Friday

+ Rave for the new Apple Mighty Mouse

+ Couldn't have happened to a nicer punk. Did you see Terrell Owens got kicked out of camp? You go, Andy!

+ Search Wars: Google's investing in the Chinese Google, will Yahoo is investing in Chinese e-commerce site alibaba.com.

+ Matt Haughey writes:

 

SportsFilter | Sportsfilter meet
MSN launched "sportsfilter" even though there's been a blog (I helped set up) 3+ years ago by the same name and domain. Jerks.

(tags: micsoftsucks blogs sportsfilter somebodytellscoble)

I'm actually a member of SportsFilter, but haven't even been there, not to mind posted, in a long time.

+ Looks like it's pretty easy to find pirated software using Chinese Google.

+ Here's an article on carbonating at home. I post it, because I can make you a deal on the CO2 and supplies ;-). Too bad I don't like seltzer water, and we don't really need syrupped drinks around the house...

audio post

And now, enough of this silly posting...

I got my 'Uncorrected Proof for Limited Distribution' of Tom Barnett's new book, Blueprint for Action in the mail direct from Putnam yesterday. How cool is that? I let out a whoop and the twins wanted to know what was up. I told them I got a book I'm excited about, but that they would think was boring. Wil said 'Is it about robots or superheroes or anything cool like that?' I said 'No, it's about contemporary world affairs.' They weren't interested

Gotta get through it. I have a (minor) goal of posting the first customer review on Amazon. And, BTW, Tom: that 70-page first chapter was a doozy! ;-)

Wednesday's links

+ Columbia housing highly affordable. Ain't that the truth. So much so that I'll probably never be able to afford to live anywhere else ;-)

+ One thing reading weblogs in a feedreader does is causes me to comment less. It takes an extra step to click through and comment, so I have to want to do it. I save a lot of steps in hitting the various sites. But the conversation suffers a little, I think. Have you seen this on your weblog or those you frequent?

+ There's some squawking about Yahoo passing Google in pages indexed. But Google's helping Baidu (read: Chinese Google) go public . That's the piece I'd rather have.

+ I've been waiting so long for this: Google now supports wildcards. Check out this interesting search: Glasgow is the * capital of Europe. Sometimes it seems like they add something new every day!

Tuesday's links

+ Aaron's back and he has a new, homemade poker table.

+ Batman Begins: the defective yeti review. Short version: he liked it, too. I agree with most of what he says.

+ Surprise: I commented in the What book can't you put down? Ask MeFi thread.

Whoa: lots of books in this thread I put down easily. But on to the ones I didn't:

The Lord of the Rings, Red Storm Rising, Neuromancer, Shogun (all violent, upon review).

The Name of the Rose was one, but my Medieval philosophy, history, and theology are pretty good, with a smattering of ecclesiastic Latin, so I could hack it pretty well.

Nonfiction-wise, I've recently enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell (Blink and The Tipping Point) and Freakonomics.

 + Captious: another Word of the Day I didn't know. I think we're up to three now.

+ The three Iowa public university radio stations merged. Comment Jason?

+ I sent Tom Barnett a link to analysis on the Amazon sales ranking (which he follows pretty closely), and he linked it.

+ Parked bullet trains look cool.

+ Google now has feeds.

Rainy days and Mondays...

But I'm feeling pretty good today. Nice and cool. Hoping the rain will come later. Better than stinkin' hot.

+ Brad says Jesus wouldn't have been a Democrat or a Republican or a fill-in-the-blank. No doubt. His message has political ramifications, but mostly it was a critique:

• The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. It shall not be so with you.
• Woe to you...
• Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's
• Ooo, Ooo. Great contemporary illustration from Will Wilimon: 'Give me a dollar. Whose picture's on it? If he cares about the stuff so much, let him have it...'
• Blessed are the poor, the meek...

[rant off]

+ Really good news about the Russian sub getting free. I'm almost surprised. Advice to Russian sailors: Don't go under the water...

+ The State had some collected quotes about the Palmeiro-gate yesterday, and I wanted to link them, but I couldn't find them. The best I can do is the perjury inquiry. Here's the hearings picture of him shaking his finger. My thought: the male of the species naturally loses muscle mass after 20 (don't I know it *frowns*). Yes, he's innocent until proven guilty, but he sure looks guilty now...

+ On the other, good hand, did you see that Iowa City was named the # 1 football town in the NATION by The Sporting News! Take that Columbus, Ann Arbor, Columbia, Clemson, Tallahassee, Baton Rouge, Knoxville, State College, College Station, Austin, Gainesville... Have I left anyone out? ;-) I have extremely fond memories of football Saturdays in Iowa City, even with the insane traffic.

CBS Sportsline ranked Iowa number 2 in the preseason. That seems a little high. 8 preseason polls

'We're gonna fight, fight, fight for Iowa...' Sing it with me!

+ Did you see that Google got angry because a reporter at CNET googled their CEO and printed some of the personal information in a column? (via Lifehacker)

The Iron Giant post

Wil has gotten really into 'Ricky Ricotta and His Mighty Robot', a series of books for kids. It made me think of The Iron Giant, so Christine brought it home from the library and the twins and I watched it yesterday. Some thoughts:

• Great movie (written and directed by Brad Bird of The Incredibles, in case you didn't know). You should see it if you haven't.
• Might have been a little too heart-wrenching for the kids (though there's a happy ending). Elizabeth cried pretty hard (but she was tired, too).
  
• Wil said it was the coolest movie after The Incredibles.
• Favorite lines:
• 'You can fly? You can fly!'
• 'I'm the luckiest kid in America!'
• Hadn't realized Vin Diesel was the voice of the robot.
• Survey question: What is Jennifer Aniston's better work: the voice of Annie in the movie or Office Space?

Pretty good post for a monday morning, if I do say so myself ;-)

Want to live in a house made of shipping containers?

I think it'd be pretty cool. Brad got me started with this post. Here's the target link therefrom: Container City . But I wasn't satisfied. So here's a summary from Treehugger. Adam Kalkin has some really great designs. Start with his quik house. fabprefab has a pretty comprehensive list of current projects, including those mentioned here. Cool designs at Addis Containers (NZ), only one of which would be big enough for our family (maybe those Kiwis need less space ;-). One of the cool things about PRO/con is that they use containers as blocks, but aren't constrained by them, that is, they might space the containers out and build a roof over it, etc.

Saturday night ('s alright for fightin')

+ The Freakonomics guys visited Google and wrote a post.

+ A discussion of the theory behind MAD, terrorists with nuclear weapons, and threatening to irradiate Mecca if...

+ Read any comic adaptations of Lovecraft lately? (Wonder if Lovecraft is where Bob Kane got the name for 'Arkham Asylum'...)

Saturday's links

+ Cool interface for looking up movies: Mashmap. Doesn't really add anything to the other sites or your local paper, but it's cool...

+ The "Not Insane" To-Do List (fits in with my goal of Getting (a few) Things Done)

+ Five reasons why I'm a geek

Jaq picks up this idea for a post. I've got more than five, easily, and may find more. My starting self-nominees:

1. When I see the letters 'FTL' I think 'Faster Than Light' instead of 'Fruit of the Loom'.
2. When I see the shipping company name "Hapag Lloyd', I think of the Greek phrase 'hapax legomena'.
3. I have memorized a lot of the home operating cities of trucking companies because I'm interested to know how far the driver (probably) is from home.
4. I have played the Civilization series for untold hours.
5. I spent a lot of time and money on role-playing games and comic books in my youth, and still love (some) comic books at 33.
6. I have an impressive ability to quote movies and can probably come up with a song line for most any word or sentence you care to name.
   
7. I have a weblog ;-) (which, I now see, after reading the originating post of this series, that he listed, too)
   

+ Ben Stein, of all people (Bueller? Bueller?) has a great op-ed on what our (American) relationship to China should be (reprinted in whole on Barnett's weblog, with his commentary ).

Thursday links

+ That Matthew Baldwin is so funny: Read his press release: Bush Appoints [Michael] Bolton To UN

+ Go look at the Acropolis on GoogleSat!

+ I've been worrying about this lately, too: Copying this whole post from kottke:

Maybe we've got it all wrong about this whole capitialism thing

"In every substantive sense, employees of a company carry more risks than do the shareholders. Also, their contributions of knowledge, skills and entrepreneurship are typically more important than the contributions of capital by shareholders, a pure commodity that is perhaps in excess supply."

Monday, Monday

+ You're getting this whole post, for obvious reasons:

Iowa University Football

Map / Google Earth

A corn maze announcing the annual Iowa - Iowa State football game just East of Ames, Iowa. The image is on its side but you should be able to see the University of Iowa's 'Herky the Hawk' to the right and Iowa State University's 'Cy' tornado-thing to the left. Below is the date of the game - Sept 13, 2003.

It's really cool in Google Earth, where you can rotate the map (well, OK, maybe that's only marginally more cool ;-)

+ I've been meaning to link this for a while, so forgive me if it's old news to you: A new study indicates that intelligence has no relation to the one's level of happiness . Tell me something I didn't already know.

+ Bush installs Bolton as U.N. ambassador

Grrr.

'Bush blamed "partisan delaying tactics by a handful of senators" [for holding up the confirmation process].' Baloney. President Bush should have sent someone who would be somewhat agreeable to both sides instead of using his 'partisan ramrod tactics'.

+ Didn't write much about Lance's triumph because it was a little anticlimactic. Here are some articles on the science of Lance, National Geographic (via kottke) and the WSJ (which talks about other athletes, too). Notes:

• '[Lance] is the most poked, prodded, calibrated and medically researched athlete in sports history.'
• 'Scientists know that his heart is at least 20 percent larger than a normal person's, he produces one-third less lactic acid than do other top cyclists and delivers oxygen to his legs at a rate higher than all but maybe 100 of his fellow earthlings.'
• Lance is a pure machine, training wise (but we already knew that). He's the only person ever documented to have improved muscle efficiency.
• I suspect this came from improving his efficiency on the bike, knowing he wanted to ride about 105 rpms and training his body until it could do it.
  
• Lance has extremely low lactic acid production.
• There's a myth that Lance lost weight from cancer that he couldn't have lost otherwise, but he was the same weight before and after.
• However, that weight may have been differently proportioned. Lance used to have more muscle mass in his chest. Now it's all quads and hams.

Sunday night

Just cleaning up a few things here.

+ Did you see the Worldprocessor globes by Ingo Günther in Wired? Some really cool representations here. Of course, I want a digital globe that could show all of them in turn...

+ Jaq ranks his favorite superhero movies. I'm going to do mine, too, but briefly (feeling too lazy to explain/comment):

1. The Incredibles
   
2. Batman Begins
3. Spiderman 2
   
4. X-Men 2
5. Spiderman
6. Daredevil
   
7. X-Men
8. Hellboy
   
9. Batman
   

Friday's links

+ Geeky article on mounting an auxiliary monitor (read: Pocket PC) to the outside of your laptop. Apparently some manufacturers are fixin' to go that way.

+ Resubscribed to dictionary.com word of the day (this time in Bloglines). It took a few days before I finally got one I didn't know: refulgent.

+ 'I've won a major award! I won the Fischerspooner contest over on Between thought and expression . The loot came yesterday: CD, CD single, poster and - ! - LP! Cool. Listening to the the album right now (ripped into WinAmp). Thanks MonsterMo.

+ defective yeti humor tags: Jesus lol bank spenders.

Hush, hush. Keep it down now...

A reference to Tuesday (meant for publication yesterday, but here goes).

+ Jaq's got a spoiler-laden discussion of HP6 that I commented on.

+ Google's customized home page just added a lot of content including not-too-easy feed subscriptions.

+ Like Brad, I got excited about Yahoo (Konfabulator) Widgets. Like him, I can't think they're anything more than sparkley things I don't need...

+ Best vigilantic use of Flickr ever! y[Yahoo!]cantpark.

US labor

+ I was really interested in NPR's report on the split in the AFL-CIO yesterday. What is the place of unions in today's world? They had the Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, on and he advocated a return to a GM-type economy. But GM is sucking wind and trying to get out of their health care. He said workers should be able to bridge to the middle class, and I agree with that. He said now executives get most of the money. That's partially true, but, really, the whole thing is driven by the price on Wall Street. We've cut back on pay and benefits and funnelled everything into the stock market where the rich get richer. He said used to be the largest employer (GM) took care of people and a family could do well on one income. Now, the largest employer (Wal-Mart) has made a lot of money for a lot of people, especially Waltons and other stock holders, but not for employees. It'd take three or four Wal-Mart incomes for a family to do well (he said). I agree with a lot of that stuff. On the other hand, I'm a Barnettian and that includes globalization and isn't the modern stock market and its machinations part of that?

Can you tell I haven't thought myself clear on this one yet? I would really value your input.

For my part, I think the new organization is a good idea (of course, I always like new stuff). I imagine the AFL-CIO is institutionalized and too slow to move.

What do you think?

Friday's links

Hmm. Long time no post. No real good reason. Some of it is tendonitis in my wrists. Makes me a little less apt to post in my spare time.

+ I've definitely been enjoying following the Tour, watching updates when I can during the day and listening to podcasts at home at night. Lance should have it nailed shut, barring something catastrophic.

+ How cool is that? This post links the spot where the Powers of Ten video took place, so you can recreate part of it yourself.

+ Funny McSweeney's (via kottke):

Ever wonder what the world's best palindrome is?

"My girlfriend has a freaking weird name: Eman Driewgnikaerfasahdneirflrigym."

+ Tiffin grows

This is crazy: Tiffin project in the works

The growing town of Tiffin is considering a huge $200 million facelift that would include an outlet mall, hotel, water park, restaurants, condos and office space.

Yikes! I was very worried this would be on our side of the highway. It's not. They're looking at the NE corner of this interchange and we are a couple miles west of this interchange on the south side of the highway.

The next day, the Press had this headline in reference to the article above: Does area have mall overload? The simple answer to that question is 'yes'. And it most certainly would if they built another big mall in Tiffin. The big 'a' Coral Ridge Mall is only 3 miles east of this interchange.

+ Via Brad, a cool little mashup of Google Maps and the Bible. I'd like to see some people really go to town with this, Google Sightseeing style, with links that would work in Google Earth.

Tuesday

+ Missed yesterday, so, if you've been following my series, here's Monday. It looks to me like there are two different etymologies over there: one saying it's a translation of the Latin ' l?nae di?s' which we see easily in the Spanish 'lunes'. Another says it's from Mona, the Saxon moon god.

+ Similar deal going on for Tuesday, where one says it's a translation from the Latin 'di?s M?rtis' (again, cf Spanish 'martes') and one says it comes from Tyr.

For my part, I'm guessing the Latin names for those days fo the week and the Latin order came first and that they got translated locally under Roman influence.

And, with that, I'm done with the days of the week. What will come next? Stay tuned!

+ Thursday night Christine said the words to me that every husband longs to hear:

Our TV is too small!

;-) And, at 19", she's right, especially with the living room's current configuration. Not that it's going to do us any good. No money budgeted for a bigger TV and lots of stuff in line ahead of it. We could make do if we rearranged the room, but I don't think we want to do that.

+ Saw a link on ZenPundit to tdaxp and read some really good stuff there that I haven't really seen elsewhere. To wit:

• Part of this Karl Rove business is a CIA 'operation':

Valerie Plame's CIA bosses took care not to ask Mr. Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement, routine in such cases, almost as if they wanted him to make a public fuss. They were not surprised, one might think, when Mr. Wilson promptly took his story to New York Times Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins, one of the great Bush-haters of all time. As Joseph DiGenova, former US Attorney for DC, recently said, "The CIA isn't stupid. They wanted this story out.

If the United States is attacked again by terrorists, one reason will be that our CIA has wasted time fighting the White House rather than the enemy. 

Those are strong (and likely true) words.

• Restructure health care by doing away with the corporate tax loop.

82 percent of Americans who earned more than $75,000 last year had job-sponsored health plans excluded from taxation, but only 23 percent of Americans who made less than $25,000 did.

Sounds good to me.

• If Al Qaeda et al. are so good at quick decision making, super-empowered individuals, and motivation, let's not try to beat them on those fronts. Let's find the places they're weak.

+ Everyone says the Tour is now Lance's to win or lose.

Thoughts on Harry Potter

No spoilers herein.

The twins used to say 'Harry Pottern', which I really liked.

I'm interested in HP. I have to be, since Christine is absolutely obsessed (and finishing up as I type. I look forward to getting my wife back). But I don't have the patience for Ms Rowling's rambling prose or her constant introduction of new characters. 'Get on with it!' I think. Then I have this absolute aversion for hateful characters like the Dursleys and Dolores Umbridge. They haven't gotten their literary due yet, and that makes me mad (not that Ms Rowling has to dish it out).

One interesting row (to use the Britishism) I found in comment threads out there was whether or not you should speed read HP. Guess what? It's up to you. It's not fine literature. If you're like me, and principally want to know plot, then go for it. Keep on rockin in the free world. If you want to read for plot first and then 'savor' it, go for it. If you want to read more slowly, go for it. This is all self-evident, right?

Something else I came across was some of the links in Technorati where people said 'Now maybe we can get past all of this HP mania.' Their prerogative. Interesting.

I searched for spoilers yesterday morning and found them. As usual, I don't have a lot of patience for many of her plot devices. One major one, in particular, in this novel seems pretty cheap to me. As far as my take on the end of this book, I think there's every chance it's not that cut and dried. That general statement makes perfect sense, right? :-) If you want to know more, email me. And let's hold off on posting spoilers in the comments.

Sunday

+ Sunday: In English, Sunday gets its name from Sunna, or Sunne the Germanic sun goddess.

+ My only list for a long time on Amazon was Resources for Tolkien Purists . Last night I got inspired and added My favorite graphic novels . While we're delving into My Amazon pages, I'm outing myself as the guy who wrote this negative review of His Dark Materials and an anonymous review of DA Carson. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to change them from anonymous to public.

+ Tom says that part of the reason reconstruction went so poorly in Iraq is that State didn't want to pave the way to war. Nor should they. That's their role. They're the Department of Peace. But we need that kind of interagency stuff coordinated if we ever get into something like this again.

Saturday

(written on Saturday, but published a day late)

Good old Saturn. And a little bonus quote for you from that link:

Its name is unique among the names of days, in that it is derived from the Roman god Saturn, while the other six names are derived from Saxon gods.

+ My overwhelming impression following The Tour over the past 24 hours is that it's a challenge of how strong you are and how much pain you can inflict on yourself. Do you enjoy putting it onto others enough to outweigh the pain your enduring? And Lance does. Mighty Lance put almost a minute into his closest competitor, Basso dropped back a very little, and Ullrich more than that.

Friday

(Named for Frige)

+ This story blows my mind. Might as well just quote the whole thing from kottke:

Here's a story that mentions that Slashdot commenter that outsourced his job , By jkottke

 

"About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting. Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing."

+ I see the proliferation of Google Mapps related to earlier developments of the planetary chalkboard and GeoURL.

+ If you're interested in mashups at all, you should check out Good Blimey Tunes. He has an amazing array of mashups all in one place. Here's a strategy. Scroll through and look for a song you like. Intrigued by the mashup? Can you stand the vs. artist? Give it a try...

+ defective yeti humor tags: Google Earth Starbucks Seattle Hipster Density.

Thursday

+ So this one has to be for Thor, right?

+ Egypt asks UNESCO for help in securing return of Rosetta Stone, other precious artifacts . Sounds fair to me.

+ Have you ever followed the Tour minute by minute? It's fun to do sometimes. If you're doing that, you should compare the commentary with the stage map. To think, they break them out be how many inches they are behind the leader...

+ WOW!!! Want to see the future of keyboards? So majorly tech-lusting...

+ It's amazing how much less email I get (including spam) since I accidentally let my domain name lapse. Should clean things out good. If you want to get me, use seanmeade-at-gmail-dot-com.

Wed-nes-day

Such a funny way to spell what we pronounce. Didn't remember the name was for Woden.

Anyway, I see in my comments that ZenPundit is reading and has added me to his BlogRoll, which I consider a great honor. Thanks, Mark, and welcome.

I also see in comments that Macon is waiting to get his new DSL hooked up (well, actually I find that fleshed out over at Kith and Kin). I know what'cha mean, Macon. Being at my folks' for a week with Mac OS 9 and AOL dialup was no party (Intarweb-wise).

Back from vacation

Hello, all. I'm back from vacation and also trying to turn over a few new leaves, so I haven't dived right back into my previous web-surfing behavior. I'm waking up at 545 each day and exercising, trying to get my diet back under control (still working on the plan), and restarting 'The Artist's Way'. I'm hopeful that these will be good changes. Not sure what the long-term weblog effects will be, but I'll keep you posted.

This morning I give you Tom's interesting take on the CIA leak, which was a different one than I'd seen elsewhere, and not very sympathetic.

Thank God it's Friday

+ I'm syndicated! (even beyond RSS/atom) Some guys started a clearing house for weblogs by members of the Evangelical Covenant Chruch called Covenant Blogs. I asked them if they wanted me on the list, and they did, so there you have it. If you are coming over here from Covenant Blogs, welcome (welcome if you're not!).

+ Brooke Shields Fires Back at Tom Cruise. Tip: don't get your psychiatric advice from celebrities. I'm afraid that some people will.

+ A little light today, but I worked for a LONG time on a longer post that isn't ready for prime time yet. We leave for Iowa tomorrow, but I will try to polish it off while I am there. I know you're waiting with bated breath! ;-)