Category - TWoS

The other day I got a notice from the university's housing department saying that they'd be doing maintenance to the network in my dorm on Tuesday morning. The notice also said that there would be computer network guys in my dorm's lobby to help with people's connection issues. I knew I'd lose my Internet connection, so it was no surprise yesterday that I couldn't get online. I went downstairs with my laptop to ask for help, fully expecting a sigh from the guys at the table because I use neither Windows nor Mac OS, but Linux -- Ubuntu, to be exact.

One of the guys gave the standard comment to the other: "This one's all you, Jim/Bob/Steve/Larry." So Jim/Bob/Steve/Larry, the resident Linux guy, had a look at my computer and started poking around. He had a laptop of his own on his desk, and I could see that it was running Linux: it was a stereotypical setup featuring KDE, tiny fonts, a space-themed background, and about 17 command line windows open. I think he said it was Sabayon Linux. Anyway, he spent five to ten minutes editing some files only to get errors connecting to the Internet. He wasn't aware of the differences between Ubuntu and Sabayon, but he asked for my number and said he'd call me when he found out.

The problem isn't really connecting to the Internet, it's setting up an Ethernet connection that requires a user name and password. That is possible with Linux, but it's apparently not as straightforward. What I want to know is why we have to enter a user name and password to connect to the Internet in our own dorms. Is someone thief going to come in, plug his computer into the Ethernet network, and steal the university's precious bits? I doubt it. (In the meantime, the Linux guy turned off authentication in my room, so I don't need a user name or password to connect. That's how they "solved" my problem initially, and it had been doing me fine until yesterday. Seriously, guys. Why do we need to do this in the first place?)

In more optimistic news, the next version of Ubuntu, 7.10 (codenamed Gutsy Gibbon), is coming out next Thursday, and, as always, it will be free (zero cost) for everyone. There's a bunch of new features that will make it easier to use, so bookmark Ubuntu's official site and return after next Thursday to download the operating system for free.

I've been using Linux for almost 8 months now, so I feel that I'm qualified to write an article about it à la The Dvorak Keyboard and You. Of course, I don't pretend to know everything about Linux, so I'm going to have a friend look it over and give me his thoughts. There are tons of sites that introduce people to Linux, but we could use one more. Most of my friends have never heard of Linux, after all, so I hope that a page about Linux on this site will allow my friends and others to give it some thought.

See what's all the rage on Wikipedia with wikirage.

15 Stunning Images Using Blur to Portray Movement.

The Change Contest is over. I know you're eager to find out who won. But first...

My going-away party was last night. Hardly anyone I invited actually showed up (thanks to those who did), but there were a lot of people overall. The party was also for my sister, who's going to college, and my grandparents, who are moving. The place was packed. There was lots of food, and there still is. Everybody had a good time. There was so much going on that it couldn't all be contained indoors, so a lot of the party moved outside, where there were all sorts of tables and chairs. Some people stayed inside to watch the football game. Luke tried to play leapfrog with a frog. We talked about plans to go to Miami on Wednesday (everyone is invited, even you). As the night grew late, Luke found out about the Driveway-A-Thon and insisted that another driveway endurance contest be held. He, Justin, TJ, and I participtaed. Luke won, staying on the driveway continuously for exactly 3 minutes.

Today I went to the grocery store to turn my change into cash. Yes, I know the bank does this, but I can't get to the bank without a car, and I'd probably have to roll all that change, which I'd really rather not do. Plus, I already did this, so it's too late for you to criticize me. Anyway, I got to the machine and was amazed by how simple the process was. I had expected to be standing there for hours placing each coin in a slot one by one. No. You just dump 'em in. It only took a few seconds to do that. Then the machine counts. It's really noisy, but it only takes a few moments. Once it determines how much you've got, it gives you a receipt that you can redeem for cash. There's an 8% service charge, but it's better than the 8.9% charge that the other grocery store's machine imposes.

I had my own guess for this contest, and it was based on the amount I had counted when the jar was a little more than halfway full. It was a long time ago, but I remember that the amount then was around $50. So I figured that with the jar mostly full, the amount of money inside would be about $75.

The actual amount of change in the jar was $77.14. Congratulations to Mark Myers, whose guess of $78.87 was off by only $1.73! He gets to write a post about whatever he likes, if he wants to. (And if he doesn't, then I suppose the runner-up can have the honors.)

In second place was Todd, who guessed $2.86 too high, followed by Natasha, whose guess was $3.04 low. Not bad for people who don't use US currency. (They're both Canadian.) Of the 14 valid guesses, the average amount guessed was $64.23, and the median guess was $68.23. Gilbert's guess of $15 was less than 20% of the actual amount. The highest guess, Daniel's $100.44, was more than 130% of the actual amount.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the contest. It's been a lot of fun. Plus, I now have an extra $70!

I knew that Weezer had two eponymous (self-titled) albums, but I didn't know that there were so many other artists with multiple self-titled albums.

Domain hacks, like blo.gs and del.icio.us, are cool. Here's a search utility for domain hacks. There are two for "theworldofstuff": theworldof.st/uff/ and theworl.do/fstuff/. It looks like those domain names are available, too.

For as long as I can remember, I've been keeping change in a plastic container in my room, hoping that someday, I'd have enough to exchange it for real money. Now, the jar is almost full, and since I'm about to go to college, I need the cash more than ever. Before I exchange my hoard of coins for paper money, I want to make things fun. So here's a contest for you all:

The challenge: Guess how much money, in US dollars, is in the jar pictured above.

The prize: The person with the closest guess gets to write a post here at The World of Stuff.

The deadline: You have until Saturday, August 11, 2007, 23:59 UTC-5 (World of Stuff time), to post a comment on this entry with your guess. After that, I will count the change and determine the winner.

Rules and stuff:

• Limit one guess per person, please.
• You must include a valid e-mail address with your comment. Guesses provided without an e-mail address will be deleted. No exceptions.
• If there are any non-US coins in there, they won't be counted.
• My relatives are not eligible. Sorry, but that's standard procedure.
• In the event of a tie, everyone who ties will get to write a post.

Extra information: The jar weighs about 8 lbs. It's heavy.

Post your guesses here. Good luck!

I got back from my cruise on Saturday. It was really great. I went with my sister, her friend Lisa, my parents, and my grandparents. The ship departed from Miami on Monday, and we spent much of that day getting used to things. It wasn't so bad because it was my second time on that ship (the Carnival Imagination) and my parents' third.

For those who have never been on a cruise, a cruise ship is basically like a floating hotel or palace. The Imagination has two dining rooms, a casual restaurant, a library, a disco, a casino, a theater, a sushi bar, an Internet café, a regular café, a swimming pool, hot tubs, bars, a lounge, and more. In short, there is no lack of things to do unless you've already eaten, don't feel like reading a book, are too young to gamble or drink, hate swimming, or don't want to pay for the Internet access. Failing that, there are new hit movies on the TV in your room.

Many people say that the best part of the cruise is not the destination -- it's the food. Your food is included with the price of your ticket, so with a few exceptions, you can pig out as much as you want. At the fancy dining rooms, you can order whatever is on the menu, and if you don't like it, you can send it back and have something else, which is good because lots of fancy restaurants serve disgusting things that common people don't like. But I saw it as a chance to try interesting things. I tried filet mignon, veal, duckling, and escargot, all of which were delicious. (I'm not a picky eater.)

The second day was a "fun day at sea" because we hadn't yet gotten to Grand Cayman, the first destination. The ship would have to pass around exotic, forbidden Cuba first. And on Tuesday morning, the misty mountains of that Caribbean island were in view in the distance. It really was a great sight to see. Later in the day, I found out that my sister and her friend love taking naps. Since I shared a room with them, that meant that I would either have to go to bed too or just wander around unable to return to the room. I rarely nap, but I decided to rest anyway. The days are long on a cruise ship, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

On Wednesday we arrived in George Town, the capital of the Cayman Islands. We had decided first to tour "Stingray City," a shallow area of water near the island where stingrays can be found. Apparently stingrays are pretty gentle and docile because it was possible to touch them and even pick them up... not that I did. I wasn't sure which parts I could touch and which parts would cause the stingray to attack me if I touched them. Even so, it was interesting to swim with them, and it was an odd sensation to feel them brushing past my legs.

Next we snorkeled in an area not far away. I'd never really snorkeled before (unless snorkeling in my pool counts), so that was fun. We got to see a lot of coral, but it was basically like looking inside a pretty lame fish tank. I forgot that I have a hard time swimming, and my goggles kept fogging up also. Plus, the seas started kicking up a bit, which made conditions unfavorable for hugging the surface of the water for air. So after a while, I returned to our boat. It was still a nice experience.

When we got back on land, our tour bus, driving on the left side of the road, took us to George Town, where we walked around and saw the touristy and not-so-touristy places. As you might expect, there were a lot of banks. I took a picture of the Legislative Assembly building (which was right next to a touristy bar) and later uploaded it to Wikipedia. Turns out the article for the Legislative Assembly had a request for images.

Anyway, the next day we were in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. From the window in our room we could see the mountains that overlook the town. We started our tour of Jamaica by going to Coyaba River Garden, which was, as its name implies, a garden. There were lots of interesting plants, and you could even drink the water from the river (actually more like a stream) that passed through. It was pretty good. Our tour bus (which also drove on the left side of the road) took us to a gated-in shopping center, which was less seedy than the non-gated-in shopping centers outside. A bunch of people wanted to braid my hair for money. It is pretty long, but I didn't have it done. That would be ridiculous.

Next, we went up into the mountains to Dunn's River Falls. It's a waterfall, but it's not like straight up-and-down because you can climb it. (It's more like a giant staircase, actually.) But before you can climb it, you have to go to the bottom. There's a boardwalk that runs along the side, through the forest. At the bottom, you find yourself on the beach. The waterfall actually leads to the beach, which makes for a fantastic sight among the yellow sand, bright blue waters, and green foliage on either side. It was the most beautiful place I've ever seen. The climb was a bit difficult at times, but I made it all the way up without getting hurt.

After leaving Jamaica, the ship made its way back to Miami, and we enjoyed another "fun day at sea" on Friday. On Saturday morning, the ship was back in its home port, and we went through the debarkation process, which is even more annoying than embarkation. But overall, I had a great time, and if I could do it again, I definitely would. This was a graduation gift for my sister and me, and it was really a good one. But it's not over yet; I'll always have the memories. Aww, how cheesy.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my friend Luke, who posted Tuesday's and Thursday's posts for me in my absence. My blogging software was having issues that wouldn't let me post entries in advance, and he made it happen manually. Thanks, Luke!

Thanks to the wonders of DVD technology, you can now read the full text of a letter shown briefly on screen in a 1958 episode of Leave It to Beaver. It's mostly filler like "This paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with anything."

What if you could walk in a straight line around the world? Use this Google Maps mashup to choose a starting point and a direction and find out where you'd go.

Graduation practice was yesterday at 8:00 in the morning, and when the principal said 8:00, he meant it. He was upset to see that hardly anybody was in this community college auditorium at the stroke of 8:00, but most people were there within a little while, including Mike, who gave me, Yamilee, and my sister a ride.

We practiced the processional, the recessional, and all the other -cessionals. The main issue was finding the order in which we would enter and exit the building. The top 10% of the class were seated in the front row, and the rest were behind us in alphabetical order. After that, they went over the procedures like walking across the stage to get the diploma (actually the diploma holder because they won't give you your diploma till you give your gown back). They also made efforts to pronounce everyone's name correctly.

At the end of the practice, they gave out our yearbooks, which I thought was unusual. In years past, they've sent the yearbook to the presses in the summer so that end-of-year events like prom and graduation could be included. The yearbook would then be distributed at the beginning of the next year. I guess they realize that it would be hard for some people to go back to the school to pick up their yearbook if they're far away in college. I guess it doesn't matter that that stuff isn't in the book. The yearbook is bigger than ever this year, and it's in full color for the first time. That almost makes up for the title: "Tornado Nights: The Ballad of the Golden Tornadoes."

After the practice, I had to stay to practice my salutatorian speech. Rebeca, the valedictorian, had told me that she hadn't finished her speech, so she went to the school to meet with an English teacher to help her write it. Meanwhile, back in this college auditorium, the speech teacher revised the class president's speech, removing references to east Asian immigrants and streaking. (I have no idea what the contexts were.) The principal told her that mentioning east Asian immigrants specifically would be pretty divisive for the audience, and he didn't want to bear the brunt of complaints. Later, he told me that my speech was good. When I delivered it to the empty auditorium, I had it down pretty well.

After that, I went to Clamsters for lunch with Nick, Mark, my sister, and some other people. Then we hung out at Mike's to play airsoft with Mike's brothers' guns. After a while, we had to get back home. We had to be back at the auditorium at 5:45 P.M. for graduation, and I did not want to be late.

We got back to the auditorium in time, and while my sister and I went into the back to meet with our classmates, my parents and grandparents (along with some of my sister's friends) took their seats. I assume that we had to be there at 5:45 so that even the people who were late would still be early; after all, the ceremony was supposed to start at 7:00. But it gave me a lot of time to meet with people and say hello. Since everyone was wearing a gold cap and gown, it was a little hard on the eyes.

Then we had to stand outside and line up for the processional. We were lined up there for what seemed like a really long time. At this time I could see that many of the teachers were there. They were wearing robes with their colleges' colors, and the length of their sleeves indicated their degree. As I was standing there, I couldn't remember the last time I had been that nervous. Mr. Oistacher, a teacher I didn't know very well, told me that UF, my future college, was a great school. The small talk comforted me a little.

We went in, and the valedictorian and I took our seats onstage. After the class president spoke and some important guests were introduced, an assistant principal introduced me. She mentioned The World of Stuff (I told you everyone knew about it) and the Beowulf movies. Anyway, I went up and delivered my speech. I didn't do so badly. The lights were really bright, though. Next the valedictorian spoke, and her speech was really good. When it came time for us to get our diplomas, we walked offstage. Some guys from the JROTC assisted the valedictorian and class president down the steps. Then a JROTC girl walked me down. It was kind of unexpected.

Then we went outside so that we could go onstage from the side. Since I was #2 in the class (that's what the salutatorian is), I graduated second. I got to walk across and shake hands with some people I didn't know. And then there was the picture with the principal handing me my diploma case. After that, I went back to my seat in the front and stood until everyone in the row was there. Then we could sit and watch everyone graduate. There were a lot of people I didn't know at all and had never seen in my life, but many of them I did know. Also, my hat was getting wobbly by that time.

Once everyone had walked the stage, the class president asked everyone to turn their tassels from the left to the right, which is apparently a traditional thing. Then, just before we exited, a couple of girls went up and sang the alma mater. Even though this came as a surprise to many people who didn't know we had an alma mater, and even though some of the lyrics were butchered in the program, and even though nobody really knew the tune except the people who were singing, we sang together anyway.

After exiting, I had to say goodbye and congratulations to as many people as I could recognize. I even saw someone I never would have expected to see: Ms. Bruton, whose Business Systems & Technology class I had first block on the first day of freshman year. She left the school a few years ago, which is why it was surprising to see her. I was so surprised that I can't even remember if I saw her first or if she saw me. I was all, "Ms. Bruton??" It's hard to believe that she was there in the beginning and also at the very end.

I handed in my gown and got to receive my actual diploma. Dr. Shipe gave it to me, and he knew who I was even though I've never had his class. I got to talk with some other people after that, including some underclassmen and graduates from last year who were nice enough to come. Then we went home.

Okay, guys, Beowulf 3 is definitely underway. We brought you Beowulf, and we brought you Beowulf 2, and it's time to round out the trilogy. (By the way, if you didn't see those two, I suggest that you watch them now as they are quite awesome, and you'll be thanking me later.) A second sequel (that is, a sequel to the sequel) has been in the works since the first sequel (the sequel to the original) was in the works, so this has been a long time coming. It still might be a long time coming, but now I've actually had some time to think about what Beowulf 3 should have, and I feel that we're ready.

The current plan for Beowulf 3, I think, is that it will follow the format of its predecessors by being both silly and epic at the same time (but mostly silly). If you've read the original Anglo-Saxon poem in your high school English class, it might have been divided into three parts (they cut out the juicy stuff), and that's where our trilogy comes from. The third part, as we studied it, involved Beowulf, having been King of Geatland for 50 years, facing a dragon who has been awakened from his slumber while guarding a treasure that someone stole something from. And that's about as much as I can give you at this point because there's still a lot to discuss, although it seems to be in the process of being finalized. Hopefully, we'll do the filming next weekend, and I expect to edit it throughout next week. But, of course, you have to be flexible with these things, so don't be surprised if it comes out a little late.

On a totally unrelated note, the multi-protocol instant-messaging client Gaim, which I reviewed extensively last year, has changed its name. The reason sounds simple enough: AOL, the maker of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), threatened legal action repeatedly over the use of three letters in the name of this third-party client. While keeping threats secret and trying to fight them off, the Gaim developers released only beta versions of their 2.0 branch for years -- a detail which is causing Gaim users around the world who were mystified by the succession of seemingly stable "beta" releases to scratch their heads and say "Oooooh..." So, that's all fine and good... except that Gaim was called "Gaim" before AOL Instant Messenger called itself "AIM." But don't try telling that to AOL, 'cause they've got a trademark to protect.

So, what did the Gaim developers secretly decide to change their project's name to? Pidgin. Not pigeon, but pidgin. A pidgin, as Wikipedia says, is "any language created, usually spontaneously, out of two or more languages as a means of communication between speakers of different tongues, and usually a simplified form of one of the languages." The connection here is that Gaim allows you to use multiple protocols with one buddy list -- I use it for AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and Jabber. Although the name sounds ridiculous, I'm sure I'll get used to it, and I'm looking forward to the final release of Pidgin 2.0, which, they've finally announced, should be out before next week.

Over the years, I've gotten some relationship questions in the Ask Jordon mailbag that I haven't felt qualified to answer because, well, I've never been in a relationship. Or on a date. But my Canadian friend Natasha has decided she's willing to help tackle these weighty questions, and so I bring you From Canada with Love. See, it's about love, and she's from Canada. So, if you need any relationship advice, just send it to us, and we'll answer it in a future blog post.

Check out The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever.

So The World of Stuff is four years old today. It's pretty odd when I think about it. If TWoS had been in high school when it started, it would have graduated right now. What started as a disorganized collection of random web pages has become a disorganized collection of random web pages with a blog and some readers. Note that I haven't truly been blogging for four years; that would come later when I realized that I would need to have something that would keep people coming back. I guess it's worked, because I've had a small but growing and fairly devoted following, and for your continued readership and support, I thank you.

It's been a good year for TWoS. I've taken up writing Greasemonkey user scripts, shown you how to find the day of the week of a given date, re-released a video and brought you two new ones, and allowed you to give some Russian flavor to your text. It's not much, all in all, but I think it's quality stuff. I'm especially proud of the videos. I should add that Beowulf and Beowulf 2 come to you via the cooperation of my friends. Beowulf 3 is coming soon.

But remember, readers, that none of this would be possible without you because then I would have done all this work for nothing, and that would make me go insane. Something else that almost makes me go insane is trying to figure out exactly how many readers I have. Certain web-based feed aggregators will tell you how many people are subscribing to your feeds when they request them. Of course, it's impossible to gauge readership accurately by this method, because not everybody uses a web-based aggregator to read blogs -- I don't -- but the information is enticing nonetheless. For example, I know that this site has 5 readers using Google Reader, 5 reading with Bloglines, 1 with NewsGator, and 1 with Rojo. So, the question remains... who are you? If you rarely or never post comments, I'd like you to post a comment introducing yourself. It's just one of those things that a blogger likes to know, especially a small-time blogger like me.

I've enjoyed maintaining The World of Stuff for the past four years, and I hope to do so for many more. Viva la Stuff!

Since August, I've been keeping access logs for this site so I can have an archive of detailed statistics about browser usage, referers, and so forth. (For those with privacy concerns, consider that this is a standard procedure on most, if not all, major web sites.) I think it's interesting to see that occasionally, someone will visit my site using, say, Windows 3.1.

Browser usage is probably the most interesting statistics. Over the past few months, almost exactly two-thirds of hits to my site have been from Internet Explorer (66.7% this month), while Firefox has claimed just over a quarter (25.8%). Considering that Firefox's usage share is about twice the Internet-wide average, I must conclude that visitors to my web site are approximately twice as awesome as the average Internet user. The little blips on the browser radar are Safari (1.9%), Opera (1.9%, trailing very closely behind), unknown browsers (1.6%), Mozilla (1.0%), Netscape (0.3%), Konqueror (0.1%), and Camino (0.1%). Browsers with a share of less than 0.1% include Epiphany, K-Meleon, Galeon, and even Lynx.

The operating system stats are also interesting. This month, 91.9% of hits have come from Windows users. Windows XP alone accounts for 83.8% of the total. Only 0.9% are using Windows Vista. Less than 0.1% are using Windows 95. Only 3.1% of visitors are using Mac OS, a figure that I expected would be a little higher. Visitors using Linux account for 2.3% of the total. Among the Linux distributions that are recognized by my log file analyzer, Ubuntu comes out on top (as it did even before I switched to it). Trailing far behind are (in descending order) SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora, Debian, and Centos. Other OSes have less than 0.1% share. They include Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OS/2, WebTV, Irix, BeOS, and -- get this -- the Sony PSP.

This month, the most popular pages on the site are:

1. Ultimate Cool Characters (13,816 hits)
2. This helpful resource for our e-mail-harvesting friends (3,089 hits)
3. The Dvorak Keyboard and You (2,733 hits)
4. The main page (1,280 hits)
5. November 2003 archives (1,022 hits, probably due to this image)
6. "Where's My Trailer?" (987 hits, the biggest spam magnet for some unknown reason)
7. "Really Bad Rita" (647 hits, another big magnet)
8. Fake Cyrillic Generator (645 hits)
9. "Tornado Waste of Time" (610 hits; why do these attract so much comment spam?)
10. "Where's My Trailer Again?" (535 hits)

So I didn't get voted Most Likely to Succeed (or any other honor, for that matter) by my class, but I forgot that I still have the distinction of being on the Top 10 page on the yearbook, where they list the top 10 seniors by class rank. I've pretty much been consistently ranked #3 in the class, so last week, I got pulled out of class quickly to have my picture taken by a couple of students who were working on the yearbook. Their design for the page is to have #4-10 standing around the letters in "SUCCESS," with #1-3 looking down on them, having "the view from the top." So for this picture, all they had me do was look down and point, and that was that. It was a pleasant reminder that I am on the top... in terms of GPA, anyway.

Find out 10 Shopping Tricks That Stores Hate.

In a similar vein: 12 Simple Ways to Save Money on Utilities.

On Wednesday, while I was TA-ing in Mr. Mumtaz's class, a girl called me over because she needed help with her HTML. They were working on tables, and apparently some of the people didn't see the really obvious typos that were making their HTML completely screwed up. This student in particular was viewing her page in progress in IE 7, which (finally) has tabbed browsing. I happened to notice that she had some other tabs open, and on one of them I saw a familiar icon: a cursive "W." The title of the page: Dvorak Anywhere.

Hummina-whaa?

I think the first thing I said was, "You use the Dvorak keyboard?" She said that she did. I asked her how she found out about it. She said that in April, she was looking up ways to type faster, and she read how the world's fastest typist uses the Dvorak keyboard, so she thought she'd give it a try. Then I happened to mention that she was on my site, and she was amused. Think about that. A kid in one of my classes found my web site pretty randomly and was using it while I watching. Or, from her point of view, a handy web page helps her type with the Dvorak keyboard where she would otherwise have to use QWERTY, and all of a sudden, the author of the web page appears in her Web Design class. I can only sum it up with the words, "WHOA FREAKY." It's a small, small Internet.

She then mentioned that she was going to ask Mr. Mumtaz to allow her to use Dvorak in class, which is something I never asked him to do. I should wish her good luck in that pursuit. Also, the problem with her table was that it was outside the <body> tag.

My aunt couldn't come here for Christmas, but she's in town this weekend, and so we're going "to christmas." Apparently "christmassing" is a word now, meaning "to celebrate Christmas." Anyway, it's also my grandmother's birthday, or it was recently, or it will be soon, so that's double the reason for my aunt to visit her family. This is the aunt who lives near my future college, by the way, so if I'm to get any gift from her, it will probably Florida Gators-related.

Here's an interesting article about restaurants that run on a sort of honor system. Patrons pay a price they think is fair, and those who can't afford a meal can spend some time working in exchange for their meal. It happens Where "Check Please" Is Your Call.

Apparently, the late Gerald Ford was notoriously difficult to caricature, with different political cartoonists coming up with drastically different interpretations of his boring face.

It's once again time for Jordon to Ask YOU!! Jordon Asks YOU!!: Do you read any other blogs? Post a comment and let me know.

For Christmas, my friend Natasha and I exchanged gifts, but she sent hers later than I sent mine. She got her gifts before Christmas, but I didn't, and so I've had to keep waiting. It was pretty unbearable, especially considering that we just had three days in a row without mail service: December 31 because it was a Sunday, January 1 because it was New Year's Day, and January 2 because it was a national day of mourning for Gerald Ford. Thanks a lot, Gerald Ford. I had to wait until yesterday, when a bag-type package from Canada Post/Postes Canada finally came.

Inside, there were two souvenir shirts, a Christmas card, some postcards of local sights, stickers, and a patch, like for sewing on things. I'm really glad the stuff finally came. I love it, and I enjoy having more things around to remind me of her... not that I need to, anyway. While I'm thinking about it, I should mention that we're just friends. Friends who like each other a lot, but "just" friends. She's almost like a girlfriend to me; she does fill an emotional need or something like that. Shades of meaning.

Winter break has been good and exceptionally warm (I've unexpectedly wound up at the beach the last two nights), but it's almost over, unfortunately. I'm probably going to have to go back to work tomorrow. I'm not really dreading it that much because I'm going to get paid. You don't get paid for going to school, but I have until Tuesday to mull over that iniquity. Why do we go back Tuesday and not Monday? I don't know, but I'm not complaining. Don't you worry, though. I'll be complaining soon.

For Greasemonkey users, I've written a user script that automatically answers the quesca on this site and hides it from your view, so you don't have to worry about typing the answer every time you post a comment. Here's the script's page on userscripts.org, and here's a direct link.

The 7 Wonders of the USA (and of each state), as chosen by somebody. A lot of them are tourist attractions, which explains why I've been to 5 of the 7 wonders in my state.

From the I'm Filing This Under "Weird" Dept., a video from the White House: Barney Cam V: Barney's Holiday Extravaganza. It stars the President's dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley, and features, among others, George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Karl Rove, Tony Snow, and Dolly Parton. That's your tax dollars at work. Think of how many homeless people you could feed with that money.