You know you need to take a break when...

With the next school year approaching, I figured it's best to adjust my sleeping schedule in advance rather than making a sudden change when I have to get back into the swing of things. My plan is to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier while allowing myself the same amount of sleep each night as I get during the school year. So yesterday I dug up an old alarm clock in my room. My regular clock is pretty cool, but the alarm is loud enough to wake the dead, and though its position at the foot of the bed is convenient for reading the time, having to lurch forward to turn off the alarm is not fun.

I figured it would be good to get 7 hours and 50 minutes of sleep, which is how much I try to get during the school year, but that's pretty hard to specify on this alarm clock I'm using. I found that out the hard way this morning when the alarm woke me a few minutes early. I had gotten almost 7 hours and 50 minutes of sleep, which happens to be just enough to make you feel somewhat rested but inescapably groggy. And that's what I deal with during the school year. I don't know how I ever get used to it. Anyway, for the sake of setting the alarm (and for getting some more precious sleep), I decided to make it 8 hours. Nice and simple. So here's the plan:

• July 30 - Aug. 3: 12:00-8:00
• Aug. 4 - Aug. 8: 11:00-7:00
• Aug. 9 - Aug. 13: 10:00-6:00
• Aug. 14 - forever: 9:40-5:30

(I'm allowing myself to stay up through midnight until Thursday so I can catch just one more week of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Yay for making one's own rules!)

Maybe during the school year I could try to go to bed a few minutes earlier, because I really can't wake up much later. Actually, I can. I reserve some time in the morning to check my e-mail and do important stuff like that. OCD, you say? Yeah, probably. But at least I don't drink in the morning.

Also continuing from yesterday: How would you go about improving your self-esteem? Any input is welcomed. That's why we have comments.

Hey wapanese kids, here's a Japanese cartoon from 1933. It's pretty trippy to watch when you have no more than a basic understanding of what's going on.

Wikipedia has a list of historical elephants.

One year ago: "I now know that when it comes to blogging, it's about what you say, not how often you say it."
Three years ago: "Okay, I got exactly 0 e-mails regarding the blog thing (somewhat more than I expected, actually), but I've decided I'm going to go ahead with it anyway."

Let's think about awesome things instead

Yesterday I got some shirts, and today I got a couple more. I didn't get any more pairs of pants today, though, because I figured that I had enough. I have two weeks to try out my new wardrobe. Then school starts. Eww, school. Yucky.

Last year, it was difficult for me to get used to going to bed early and waking up early. I felt groggy for weeks. This year, I'm going to try to make a gradual change before school starts. I'm going to get the usual 7 hours and 50 minutes of sleep -- no more, no less -- while sliding my bedtime back from midnight or 1:00 to the usual 9:40.

I don't really want to say much else about school (or getting ready for it) today. I don't want to have to think about it. There's plenty of time for that later. Besides, I start to get a sickening feeling whenever I think about school.

Ask Jordon:

Gilbert: Why do you have such self-esteem issues...?

Gilbert probably asked this question after reading my response to his last question, in which he asked why I was so cool. The truth is that putting myself down is like a reflex. Sometimes I see myself as a failure, a sluggard, or a burden. I don't really know where it came from, but it's probably from a young Jordon being taught not to be selfish or haughty. Wait, who am I kidding? It's my own fault.

No, wait. That's me doing it again. It's a tricky subject, because I don't know whose fault it is. Anyway, I guess I've noticed that self-deprecation (read: humility) is more welcomed than its opposite: being self-righteous. But I guess that when I can insult myself without realizing it, it's time to take myself more seriously. So I think the best way to be is somewhere between the two? Maybe? But then again, how would you answer the question, "Why are you so cool?"

Is it good to take oneself seriously or humorously? Do I have self-esteem problems, and if I do, how can I fix them? Maybe I need a shrink? Anyone who has any opinion on this is invited to join in the discussion.

Luke: What's happening psychologically when I think I've got something insightful to say but I don't remember what it is?

It's my belief that if you can't remember something, it simply wasn't worth remembering. (There is a chance that it could come back, though.) I guess an exception would be if you're old and have memory problems due to some medical condition or your old age.

The situation in the Middle East is very complicated. Luckily, there's the Middle East Buddy List, a handy chart that summarizes some of the relationships between the parties involved.

Who knew that there was a "paranormal phenomena" site on About.com? Here's a gem from their photo gallery: What Are These Things? (It looks like snow or dust.)

One year ago: "Sí, yo puedo hablar español."
Two years ago: "It just goes to show that spelling reform, unless made mandatory, is a hit-or-miss thing."

A moment's peace

I woke up this morning knowing that I would have to go shopping with my sister and my mom. It was time for my annual trip to the department store to get some new threads for school, and I accepted that. I was hoping to try some new things. See, people are generally right when they characterize me as someone who always wears plain t-shirts (usually with a pocket) and jean shorts. That's pretty much what I've been wearing to school every day for the last three years. I thought about how to change it, and I pretty much decided to include more polo and button-down shirts, along with wearing long jeans (even though they make me so hot) and other sorts of long pants. And that's just what I got. It took a while to find what size pants would fit me, but it was worth it, because the ones I tried on first were way too tight. My mom and sister also spent some time getting things for themselves.

Around that time it was time for lunch, so we met my dad and my grandmother at Smokey Bones, a restaurant I'd never been to. I'd heard that it was really good, so it was a good opportunity to check it out. Of course, I got a burger, but this time I decided to try a bison burger since it happened to be on the menu. (I'd been hesitating to order bison burgers at Ruby Tuesday. I thought those things were endangered!) So I went ahead and had that, and it was pretty good. It seemed to be a bit dryer than beef, and it cooks more thoroughly, so it seemed to be crunchy around the edges even though I had it medium. It was an interesting experience, but I think I'll stick to beef in the future.

After that, my mom, my sister, and I went back home so that we could drop off the things we had bought (and so my sister could drop off her leftovers from the restaurant). After a few minutes of rest and recuperation, we went back out to a used clothing store. I was hoping to find even more clothes at even better prices, but a lot of the shirts were too much like the ones I had bought already. I guess I should have bought them anyway. I also saw a t-shirt that I sort of wanted to get, but I changed my mind after seeing that the previous owner had written his name on the inside of the collar. Kind of creepy, in my opinion. After spending about a million years there (because my sister bought more things), we went somewhere else. Where was it?

Oh yeah, Starbucks. You can't forget Starbucks on a big day out. Even I joined in on the fun. After all, they make coffee drinkable! As we went back to the car, my friend Reid's mom spotted us. I had just seen her onstage with Reid in The Pirates of Penzance recently, so that was a nice coincidence.

After a lot of driving around, we went to this enormous shoe store. I've never seen such a big shoe store in my life. It was like a department store's shoe department times ten. My mom and my sister spent some time buying multiple pairs of shoes. I was there for moral support?

Finally, we went home. I was looking for something to eat for dinner when my dad "asked" me to mow the lawn. It was getting late, so it wasn't as hot as I had thought it would be, but we still have the biggest lawn in the neighborhood, so it took me a while. Then I took a nice shower to cool off.

I was looking for something to eat for dinner when my dad suggested that we go out and do some driving. I obliged because I realize that I need all the practice I can get if I am to be a fully functioning adult in the coming years. I practiced driving for about a half an hour, going around in parking lots and backstreets. I was all nerves, and I also felt two foot small for being so clumsy with something I should have been doing two years ago. Toward the end, he wanted me to go down 10th St., a major artery, but by then my life was practically flashing before my eyes, so I said no way, José, so he took us home.

Then I was looking for something to eat for dinner, and I did. And now the rest of the day is mine. Actually, it's night now. I've been gypped. I'm not used to being this busy.

Here are some humorous tales from an American visiting England for the first time: Just Who Is This Magna Carta Fellow?

Remember what the Internet looked like ten years ago? Neither do I. Luckily, one netizen (does anyone say that anymore? did anyone ever say that?) provides snarky commentary on how major companies' sites looked in the early, amateurish days of the World Wide Web: Internet '96.

One year ago: "I think guys have to wear a tie."

700th post

Yesterday my friend Sean invited me to go to Lake Ida with him and some other friends, including Mike, for his birthday. His birthday was actually two weeks ago, but he was away then, so he celebrated it later. Not only did I give Sean a gift for his birthday, but he gave me a gift for mine. That's what's cool about your friend's birthday being the day after yours.

We went in the mid-afternoon, which I had been told was a good time to go because most of the people were gone by then. It wasn't very crowded. There was a lot of equipment to be brought: a personal water craft, a wakeboard, several inflatable inner-tube-type things, and of course, food. The weather was great for everything. There were clouds, but there was no rain. The clouds were mostly overhead, so it was bright enough without being hot, and I didn't have to squint when I was outside.

At first, Mike tried to wakeboard, but he couldn't get himself upright after many tries. Later, Mike and I rode an inner-tube-type thing tied to the PWC. The inner tube was long and you had to kneel on it in a single file while holding a handle in front of you. That made balancing kind of tricky, particularly on turns. Mike and I didn't do so well at the whole balancing thing. We fell off a bunch of times, and at high speed, too. When this thing tips over, you lose your grip, close your eyes, and feel yourself tumbling and skidding along the surface of the water. The next thing you know, your life jacket is keeping you afloat and everybody's laughing with you and trying to figure out who caused the accident.

So after six or eight or ten of those little mishaps, it was other people's turn to have some fun, so I sat back and watched. My neck, as you might imagine, hurt quite a bit from all those falls. I committed myself to enjoying all the food and watching other people fall off inner tubes. Later, as it was getting dark, Sean took me out for a spin on the PWC. Man, did we go fast. I thought we were going to flip over on some of those turns, and I was trying to remember what I had learned about balancing from my last experience. It was quite a thrill. We really need to get one of those.

Sean's mom mentioned that they should go back to the lake before summer vacation ends. That would be great. I had a good time, and I have the sore neck to prove it. Also, I heart my chiropractor.

Did you know that 90% of Ask Jordon questions come from my friends?

Gilbert: Why am I so cool? In fact, why are you...?

You're cool because you're like me, and I myself am cool. I'm cool because -- wait. We're not cool. Well, maybe you are, but not me. If you're cool, it's because of the ways you're not like me, my friend. Can you make sense of that? Because I don't think I can. That's how uncool I am.

elles: what's your view on love? (just in general)

Well, Elle(s), that's a big question that I'm not really sure how to answer. It's hard to explain how I feel about it. It all depends on the context, I guess. Let me tell you, unrequited love is the worst feeling in the world. You probably know that, but I know it more. On the flip side, there's nothing in life that's sweeter than someone loving you. That's based on my inferences, of course, because such conditions are impossible for me to produce in everyday life! There was this one time when I asked out a girl and she said yes. That was a natural high right there. I know, I've said this a million times, but I never felt so good in my life. I felt like I could take on the world. But there was a misunderstanding, and we ended up not going out. Figures!

Just in general, my view on love is that it's a good thing.... sometimes.

The earth is over 5 billion years old. It's really hard for most of us to wrap our minds around such a length of time. Luckily, a simple way to visualize it is to use a roll of toilet paper as a timeline. If you have a roll that's about 44 m long, then all of recorded history would take up the last 1 mm. Isn't that wild?

Oh, those Japanese. It must have taken a lot of work to set up loads of everyday household objects so that they would fall like dominoes (YouTube link).

One year ago: "Hopefully by then we'll be able and allowed to go."
Two years ago: "But when (if) I get my driver's permit, I better make sure they get it right lest I actually become Jordan Kalilich."

Oh, hear that old piano...

The other day, the whole family went to the movie theater to see A Prairie Home Companion. I wouldn't have guessed that it was still out, because it came out on June 9, but we saw it on the marquee. The theater is near our house, but it's not one that we usually go to, and I now remember why. After going to a Muvico theater, you don't want to go anywhere else. No stadium seats at this little place. I don't even think they had stereo sound. And even though it was a Tuesday night, there were four other people in the theater, which was way more than I expected.

I'm surprised that it's taken us this long to see the movie, because my parents are big fans of the radio variety show of the same title. They've been listening to it for years and years and years. When I was little, I accepted without question that we had an enormous antenna attached to the house, but I never knew what it was for. It turns out that before I was born, the local public radio station stopped carrying A Prairie Home Companion, and my dad got a huge antenna so they could listen to it on another station. That's how much they like the show. Every week they record the show (on videotape because it's two hours long) so that we can listen to it at our leisure throughout the week.

I'll make sure that not too many plot or ending details follow, but suffice it to say that it was a simple yet entertaining film. The basic plot is that there's a long-running radio show called A Prairie Home Companion that's about to be cancelled... but not if the host, cast, and crew can do something about it. It was entertaining to see the real show's host, Garrison Keillor, playing himself, thereby putting a face to the laid-back voice that millions of people tune in to hear every week. Interestingly, several fictitious characters from the show are brought to life as real people; from the show's popular sketch "Guy Noir: Private Eye" comes Guy Noir, an out-of-work P.I. who, in the movie, works as a security guard for the show. Dusty and Lefty from the show's "The Lives of the Cowboys" are featured in the movie as real-life musical guests. Similarly, actual cast members from the show play crew members in the movie. I don't know, I thought it was interesting.

With the dramatic elements of the show largely removed, the fictitious version of the show focuses a lot more heavily on music, which is fine. It would have been nice to hear Keillor's usual monologue about his (fictitious) hometown of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average," but I guess that would have taken away from the other actors' respective subplots, making for not as good of a movie. If you want to hear "The News from Lake Wobegon," you can always listen to the radio show online at its official site.

Considering how much material from the radio show found its way into the movie (the screenplay was written by Keillor, after all), I think you'll probably appreciate it more if you've listened to the show, but it's not necessary for enjoying the film. Anyway, if you're looking for a strong plot in the movie, you might want to be warned that there isn't one. It's more like a documentary or a character study, really, but that's just fine. The film carries a message about life and human nature, if you want to look for that. I'm not really adept at finding that stuff, but I could feel that it was there. And that's all I have to say about that.

Speaking of Lake Wobegon, "the little town that time forgot" has given its name to a psychological phenomenon, namely, the tendency for everyone to think they're above average.

Find out How Stores Are Secretly Using Barry Manilow to Rob You. I had already known about the psychological tactics employed in supermarkets (placing certain items on eye-level shelves, playing certain kinds of music, putting junk by the cash register so you'll want to buy it, and so on) but I had no idea that these brainwashing techniques were so rampant in every kind of store.

One year ago: "It's a good thing, too: pages are falling out left and right."

The incredible disappearing rights, part 2

It's time for a follow-up to my post about our vanishing civil liberties. On June 26, I said:

Let me begin by saying that I was wrong. I did not see our civil rights being chipped away every zarking day. But I've been able to rip plenty of examples from the headlines nonetheless. For one day, I'm playing the pundit. Let's begin!

June 27: A columnist for the Washington Post reported on the Senate's debate on the proposed constitutional amendment that would make it a crime to burn or otherwise desecrate the flag:

We've got bigger problems than flag-burning. The idea of criminalizing this exceedingly rare act just can't hold water. In the first place, the Flag Code, which sets down guidelines (not laws) on how the US flag should (not must) be treated, states: "The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning." It's okay if you want to destroy the flag because it's old, but according to some people, it shouldn't be okay if you want to destroy the flag to make a statement. Determining intent could get touchy, and so flag-burning might have to be a thoughtcrime. If you ask me, freedom of speech means tolerating people's opinions and how they express them, and if it makes you mad, you always have the right to give your own opinion in response. Burning a flag would be a victimless crime; it does not make soldiers die in Iraq or cause senior citizens to lose their Medicare benefits.

Also, the potential exists for lawmakers to take the definition of the US flag way too far. A flag-burning bill under consideration would define the flag as "any flag of the United States, or any part thereof, made of any substance, in any size, in a form that is commonly displayed as a flag and that would be taken to be a flag by the reasonable observer." That's odd, because the US flag is defined very specifically in other legislation. Moving along...

June 29: News.com.com.com.com.com reported on Congress and social networking web sites.

There's a difference between spying on people and trying to keep them safe. It's difficult and unnecessary to record the browsing habits of Internet users just to weed out a few bad ones. Why make everyone feel unsafe? Why don't they wait until they suspect that certain people are up to no good? Isn't that the way you get criminals? From the Internet to airports, it's terrible for law enforcement (or pseudo-law-enforcement) to investigate just everybody (or worse, random people). They'd be wasting all their time on innocent, innocuous people when the real criminals could be getting away. If they're doing their job right, they should know how to spot the bad guys by other means.

June 30: This is very disturbing: Has This Country Gone Completely Insane?

Again I say unto you: don't think it can't happen here! All I can say is watch out, Michelle. Could poetry readings be the next target? (By the way, Michelle, does Coral Springs for Peace sell t-shirts? I'd like to get the chance to exercise some basic civil rights before they get taken away.)

July 8: Another incident of schools acting as though their students have no civil rights. This time cell phones are the issue. (The original article is here, but you have to pay to read most of it.)

Most schools would say that if you're a student, you can be subjected to random, meaningless searches without probable cause. I don't think this is right at all. Maybe it's the fact that I'm a student, maybe it's the fact that I love my freedoms, I don't know. It's one of those two. But making students think that unconstitutional searches are okay only teaches them to accept future unreasonable searches when they're adults.

July 11: MSNBC reported on the future of the Internet and where it lies: Washington.

No! What's wrong with benign neglect? This basically boils down to an argument of free speech vs. big business, and we all know who's going to win. Unfortunately, this is not a question of "if," but of "when." Enjoy your free speech while it lasts!

July 25: Finally, we look at a federal judge throwing out a lawsuit against AT&T that would have required them to state whether they had given the government their customers' phone records. The Associated Press reports:

I think that people have a right to know if they're being spied on so that they can do something about it. I don't think that saying whether a company gave phone records to the government is tantamount to letting the terrorists win. Terrorists are not stupid. If they know that they can't communicate by phone, they'll find some other way. And it would seem that they know they can't. The government will probably spy on people no matter what, and the terrorists are going to have to get craftier if they want to kill us all.

Okay, that's enough punditry for a long time. I'm glad I got that out of my system. But wait, there's more! The links, that is.

If you've been to an airport within the past, say, five years, you may have had your bags searched without probable cause. (I know I have!) In case this happens to you, be prepared to let the Homeland Security guys know how you feel with your Fourth Amendment luggage tag.

Last week on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart was given a briefing on net neutrality (YouTube link) by the show's "resident expert," John Hodgman (best known as the PC guy from Apple's Get a Mac ad campaign). It's worth watching, even if you already know what net neutrality is all about.

One year ago: "Such a long way, but the only way. I'm determined to work for it."
Two years ago: "I say bypass all the funny squiggly lines and learn to type instead."

about:mozilla

Today I did something that I think I've never done -- I went through all of my bookmarks. I had a staggering number of them, many of which sat unclicked for years, even after I moved them from Internet Explorer to Firefox. "This is superbly interesting," you are probably saying. "So how many bookmarks did you have?" Well, I didn't think to keep track of that, but by my count I now have a slim 274. It really doesn't seem like that many. Actually, that figure includes RSS feeds that I read, some bookmarks that came by default with old versions of Firefox, and a few duplicates.

I've been using Mozilla Thunderbird as my e-mail client for a while, and it seems that in the latest version(s), it automatically flags messages as spam but does not mark them as read, which gets pretty annoying. I don't get a pop-up notification on my desktop when they arrive, but it's still annoying to have to mark the Junk folder as read whenever I discover that I've gotten some spam. I've been looking for a way to make Thunderbird 1.5.0.x mark as read the messages that it flags as spam, and I found it in this blog entry. What you have to do is go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General, click on "Config Editor," find the preference called "mail.server.default.markAsReadOnSpam," toggle its value to "true," and restart Thunderbird. It's been working for me; now I don't even have to be aware that I get spam. Plus, I learned that Thunderbird has an equivalent of Firefox's about:config.

In an attempt to bore you even more, I shall describe another neat Thunderbird trick I've learned. There are some people whose e-mails I just don't want to read, so I've set up a filter (Tools -> Message Filters) to flag their messages as "Annoying" and send them to the Trash folder. I also use the Trash folder as a repository for Junk messages that have been in the Junk folder for more than one day (Tools -> Junk Mail Controls). Even when I'm going through the Trash I don't want to see e-mails that I didn't want in the first place, which is why I've set up a custom view to be used on that folder. On the Search toolbar, next to "View," I selected "Customize" and created a view that would only show messages not marked as junk and not labeled "Annoying." Thunderbird will remember what view you use for each folder, and you can switch the view back to "All" at any time. It's pretty handy.

I didn't know that July 15 was World Firefox Day. Apparently if you refer Firefox to a friend before September 15, your name and your friend's name will be in Firefox 2.0 (in the Credits or something, I'd assume). That would be pretty neat, if only because I'd have a chance to tell a friend about Firefox. The only trouble is that I can't really think of anyone who would make the switch if I told them about it.

You know the whole thing about playing Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon along with the film The Wizard of Oz, right? Dark Side of the Rainbow is a handy way to refer to it. Now you can watch the whole thing online (Flash, sound, etc.). Note that the most accepted method of synchronization is to watch the film until the album ends, which explains why the video is only 43 minutes long. Although a lot of it is just people talking inaudibly during trippy guitar solos, there are some cool bits here and there. One thing's for sure, though: it's definitely not anything that Pink Floyd planned, and whoever thinks otherwise is a nutter.

One year ago: "On July 13, 2010, I'm drinking my brains out."
Three years ago: "I mean, come on, who's going to want to read about a 14-year-old kid?"

The rise and fall of Slowpoke's Pokémon Page

Seven years ago today, I opened my first web site to the public. It was a Pokémon fan site called Slowpoke's Pokémon Page. Yes, when we were in fourth and fifth grade, that was the big thing, and the Internet was new and exciting. The most logical way to combine Pokémon and the Internet was to start a fan site with news, games, pictures, and who knows what else, and then promote it any way you possibly could -- by giving people awards, trading links, and joining top site lists. Often the webmaster would refer to himself or herself as a particular Pokémon, and Slowpoke was my favorite, so I went with that.

The first thing I needed was a place to host my site. It wasn't long before I looked to the free hosts that were flourishing thanks to pop-up ads. I had GeoCities in mind because it was very popular at the time, but being the dumb 9-year-old I was, I couldn't navigate through the site enough to create an account. Well, my dad couldn't either. We ended up sending them an e-mail saying something to the effect of "Dear GeoCities, We would like to make a web site with your service. How do we do this?" Then my friend Casey recommended Angelfire, which I ended up sticking to.

As for HTML itself, my first HTML tutorial came from -- you guessed it -- a Pokémon fan site. I learned all the things you needed to know: making links, setting the background image, changing the font color, and even making links out of images. I'd venture to suppose that Pokémon inspired a generation to learn HTML and start making web sites. It was really as simple as that; I caught on to HTML rather quickly, as I recall. One day I made up a draft of the main page ("Slowpoke's Pokémon Home Page"), and it wasn't long before I knew enough HTML to realize my design.

After a couple of days of working on the page, it was ready to go public, and on July 24, 1999, I started promoting SPP. It grew quickly as I added more and more pages. Eventually Casey joined as a co-webmaster to provide the latest Pokémon news. And thanks to my aggressive promotion, the site became more popular than I could have imagined. I even got a domain name. The site really wasn't that popular now that I think about it, but I felt that it was back then, and I guess that's all that counts.

But, after a while, other interests pulled me away from my site and Pokémon in general, and by the end of 2000, I had stopped updating SPP. Later I would go on to work on other web pages, including (but not limited to) flipacoin.net and The Dvorak Keyboard and You. I also made a side project out of compiling the list of characters that would eventually become Ultimate Cool Characters. But it bothered me that whenever somebody asked for my URL, I couldn't just give them one address. I needed to keep everything together. And that's how, in 2003, The World of Stuff was born. The rest, as they say, blah blah blah.

Of course, SPP's legacy remains. I used ZZN to create an e-mail service called SPP Mail. I started using it in 2000, and I still have the same address to this very day. That explains my e-mail address, if you were ever wondering about it. And how could I forget my old host? The World of Stuff itself was hosted on Angelfire in its earliest days. And, well, I think that's about it. Maybe there isn't as much of a legacy as I thought... except, of course, that all this wouldn't be here if I hadn't become obsessed with Pokémon in the fourth grade.

Blog in Space: "When telling the world simply isn't enough." Yes, you can have the content of your blog beamed into space. Supposedly.

First we had captchas that required users to retype some partially obscured letters to prove that they were human. A few newer captchas have taken it further by presenting (for example) a bunch of pictures of waterfowl and requiring the user to select the goose. The hotcaptcha is in a similar vein. It presents nine guys or girls from Hot or Not, and you have to select three good-looking ones. Best (or worst) of all, you can even use it on your own site.

One year ago: "The odds of you being killed this year are 1 in 1,755."
Two years ago: "I can almost hear you cringing, but sometimes you have to stick to what works."

The local news: it sucks pretty bad

One thing I've noticed about spending a lot of time on the computer is that it's very easy for me to pump music into my ears for extended periods. How do people tolerate this? I'm sure it's okay in moderation (everything is, as they say, but I think that knife wounds to the heart are an exception), but in the age of the iPod, it's easier than ever for people to live in their wide(?) world of tunes day in and day out. How many of us Generation Y kids are going to be hard of hearing in twenty or thirty years. Too many, I say. But you know, by then they'll probably have found a cure for hearing loss or something. If you watch the tail end of your local news program, you'll learn that scientists(?) are making weight-loss pills and finding cures for things every day.

My sister got back from the church youth group trip today. They went snorkeling in the Florida Keys. I talked to some of the other people, and they all said they had fun, in spite of all the mosquitoes and sunburns. I don't really regret staying here because I didn't want to be like the youth group members who only go to the fun activities and not all the regular meetings. Actually, I don't know if there are any of those types anymore, but there used to be a few.

I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show the other day. It was good, and the songs were fun, but I wouldn't watch it every week for 30 years.

This is what happens when nobody Asks Jordon for a long time:

Brian: Pelicans?

Pelicans!

I love the Internet. Now it's easier than ever to make a complete idiot out of... well, a complete idiot. And America's Next Top Idiot is Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), whose poor understanding of the Internet showed last month when he said the following:

(Wikipedia has more.) Now, what better way to make fun of someone than put his statements to a techno beat? Check it out.

What would it be like to read your own obituary? Over the years, it has happened to a few people whose deaths were reported erroneously. Mark Twain put it best when he famously said, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Here's a long list of premature obituaries.

One year ago: "I should save that letter. It's the last I'm ever going to get from Harvard."
Two years ago: "Maybe next month I'll have a reader survey. (If there's more than one of you, that is.)"

The mathematics of awesomeness

Sometimes, things don't work out after all. A thunderstorm has been passing through today, making my already poorly-laid plans for a jam session go awry. Luckily, though, I had some musical fun by myself. When nobody was home, I cranked my amp to an obscenely high level. Usually when I put the gain on 10, the volume has to be extremely low, and a hair's width makes a huge difference. Today I cranked the volume up to about three quarters of the way between 0 and 1. It sounded amazing. (I can't even imagine what 10 would sound like. Or 11, for that matter.) So I guess there is hope for my guitar playing sounding good. I've come to think that there's a simple formula for how awesome your music sounds:

...where A is awesomeness, s is skill, q is quality of equipment, and g is the coolness of the genre. The variables s, q, and g can be placed on a scale of 1 to 10; therefore, awesomeness is rated on a scale of 1 to 100. Take a world-class banjo player, for example. He can really pluck away at those strings like you wouldn't believe, so let's say s = 10. He's got a great banjo, but it is just a banjo, so q = 7. And he does bluegrass, which is okay because it sort of inspired rock and roll? Let's let g = 4. So his awesomeness factor is 1/2*4*(10+7), or 2*17, which equals 34. He's fairly awesome, but I wouldn't stay after a show to get his autograph. Hmm... do I smell a collaborative awesomeness index site, complete with live voting?

Anyway, with not much to do and a thunderstorm a-brewing, I sat at home and read. As usual, we have to read a book over the summer, but this year we got to choose one of several books. I chose "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien because my freshman English teacher had recommended it when I was in his class. I had put the book down for a while after finally discovering (by reading the cover, title page, etc.) that it was a work of fiction. I was a bit disgusted, actually, because it all seemed so real, and the author acted like it was real. But in the parts that I read today, he said that all of it was made up. I wondered what the point of reading it would be after finding out that it's all bull, but at the same time I was captivated by the author's prose and by the fact that I'd committed myself to reading it. So I plowed through the remaining half of the book and now I'm done.

It wasn't just the storm that's put a damper on my day. Just yesterday I was marvelling at how great my web host is, and how I never even have to worry about them. Today: massive, apocalyptic downtime. Hours upon hours upon hours. Well, it was a few hours, at least. Time seems to slow down when no one can access your site. But actually, this is where my host's business model really pays off. See, they charge me according to how much bandwidth and storage I use. When their servers are down, there's no bandwidth sent and so their revenue is at stake. You can bet they'll fix the problem as fast as they can. Needless to say, the downtime is over, as you are now at my web site reading this.

Love late night TV? Check out The Late Night TV Page, which lists upcoming guests on all the big late-night shows and some daytime shows. If an upcoming show is a rerun, it will mention when it originally aired, which can be handy. Best of all, there are RSS feeds for each show, so you can always be on top of things.

Here's a good sanity test. If all of the statements on the list sound normal to you, you need help.

One year ago: "What's the opposite of mischief? Just 'chief'?"