hello! yoshi

1. I don’t like anybody running for President this season.

2. I don’t like American Idol. I’m just killing time, waiting for “So You Think You Can Dance”

3. This writer’s choice is chocolate. And taunting Yoshi. Ooh. I really like taunting Yoshi with chocolate.

Daniel here… I just had to tell you, as is my tradition on FFAF, another story about Yoshi and I. As you know Yoshi and I go way back. And I do mean waaaay back. And before you ask, he is totally older than me. So anyhoo. One time, that last year we were in high school together (he was a senior and I was a freshman) we had decided to play this joke on the school. Yes the whole school. It was one of those pep-rally things. You remember those, all the cheerleaders and the football team would put on a production with the faculty and all? It was usually like 6th period…

Anyhoo, so Yoshi had this big idea that we were gonna go under the gym into the boiler room and blow up the school… Funny right?

Wait, no. That wasn’t me and Yoshi… It was a movie I had seen..

Huh. Well now my whole post is ruined… Better luck next month! :)

Yoshi thinks I’m worse than he is when it comes to food and having a bottomless-pit stomach because I don’t actually gain weight (which is totally false, btw, I do gain weight…just not from the waist up)…but I think I finally found my weakness…

Otis Spunkmeyer Chocolate Chip Muffins

I’m not a big chocolate eater, with the exception of macadamia nuts…but these are freaking AWESOME!

Work keeps these stocked…and they are deliciously delicious. I figure, if I keep eating them, eventually, they’ll run out, and these won’t be here to tempt me anymore. But, the restocking fairies must be sneaking in at night. They keep bringing more!

It’s as if I hadn’t even made a dent in the muffins…so I take more…and more…because I have to eat them all so they will go away and not make me fat…but they keep coming back!

HELP!

Okay, admittedly, I have been a hit or miss fan of American Idol in the past. But this year? Pfffft. Whatever. There is not a Daughtry or a Bo Bice or anything else with any charisma that is catching my attention. I mean, I totally missed several episodes on my TiVO and I could actually care less. I just do not care about any of these people. I am not rooting for anyone in particular and I also do not care one way or the other if anyone gets kicked off.

Blah.

Is it because of the so called “scandal” of American Idol accepting people who have already had a shot a music stardom (via record deals that flopped horrifically) or because I just truly do not care?

Discuss.

The problem with getting older is not so much the outer appearance of wrinkles, gray hair, or anything cosmetic that comes with aging. It’s the nagging problems that never existed before.

Case in point: My shoulder.

I fell off my skateboarding about two weeks ago, and initially I did not feel anything. This was not the first time I fell off my skateboard, I have fallen off my skateboard thousands of times, and in more precarious situations than the one that landed me with this nagging shoulder problem.

Initially I thought it wasn’t my shoulder at all, I thought for sure it had something to do with my pillow, since the pain was traveling up to my neck.

I went out and bought a new pillow. My neck stopped hurting and it appeared that my shoulder was no longer nagging as much, then it came back! For whatever reasons my shoulder is still hurting, despite my neck not hurting, and I blame aging.

Ten years ago, I was fifteen years old, and I was jumping off sets of stairs, hand rails, jumping picnic tables, school benches and a plethora of other obstacles on my skateboard. In the interim I was also falling off my skateboard in mid air, and landing heavily on my shoulders, arms, back, and knees, with no problem.

Fast forward ten years later, a desk job and some uneven concrete and I’m nursing a shoulder injury for two weeks straight.

I hate aging.

So, today is February 29th. Yay leap year!

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I don’t remember ever being taught that leap year had actual rules of when it happens, and that sometimes there’s not a leap year when you’d expect there to be. They were talking about some mathematical equation on the radio yesterday and the people on the radio were very confused.

So, for those of you that, like me (and by me, I mean Katie of Kat Scratch Fever and KSF To-Go), were not taught the Rules of Leap Year, I present this simple algorithm!

if year modulo 400 is 0 then leap
else if year modulo 100 is 0 then no_leap
else if year modulo 4 is 0 then leap
else no_leap

Hopefully that clears it all up for you. Happy Friday!
PS: I’m running FFAF on my site, feel free to drop by and make a post!

Hey everyone! This is Colin from good ol’ therapy in the making! And as you can imagine I’m here for Free For All Friday. Who doesn’t love a free for all? Any kind of free for all. No wait, that came out dirtier than what it sounded like in my head.

So, as some of you may know, this is the first time I’m taking part in FFAF. In fact it is the first time I’m opening my own blog for FFAF. So once you’re done reading and commenting here, why don’t you come over my blog and show my guest bloggers and me some comment love? You can even guest blog yourself if you want!

I use Firefox and I have a nasty habit. I no longer use the address bar. I type almost everything into the Google search box and sometimes even URL’s! Apparently I am not the only one that does that, I read somewhere that it is common and people use Google as an entry point to sites they want to visit even if they know the address.

A few minutes ago I tried to google free for all friday hoping to find other blogs that are participating this week but I pressed return before tying “friday”. As expected most of the results where not related to FFAF but what surprised me were the sponsored links on the side.

I took my Google Adwords Advertising Professional exam almost a year ago and I remember most of the rules regarding ad copy. I remember very well that this sort of thing was not allowed…

Have you noticed a decrease in the quality of Google AdWords ads recently too, or is it just me? Do you use the google search bar of your browser as an address bar too or am I addicted?

Ars Technica has an article about the hubbub started by Patrick Dempsey’s suggestion for a second, safer internet. It includes a good rundown on what started it and also Dempsey’s response to the ripping he got about this suggestion.
In one respect he makes a valid comparison in which we don’t let murders go just because they cross some jurisdictional line and the same should hold true for the internet. This is a good argument to make since real world boundaries are hard to enforce in the digital world and has allowed online criminals a way around real world laws. That isn’t completely a technical issue though, but still bears some weight.
At real contention is when he explains making things safer from spam, identity theft, phishing, and some of the other dangers the internet has due to its freedom. So his proposal would be Internet #1 which would be like it is today, and Internet #2 which would require an authenticated log-on (I thought we had this already with AOL?).
The problem that comes from this thinking is that technology usually isn’t the fix for these types of problems.
An analogy would be your ATM PIN. In order for your ATM card to be secure nobody is supposed to know your PIN. This makes your ATM card secure to be out in the wild world because it can’t be used without that PIN. Yet at most self service locations like gas stations and grocery stores, people don’t think about covering up their PIN when they enter it. Those same people will be sure to cover it up at the actual ATM machine though. It’s a mental thing, not a technology thing that is tripping up security in this case.
The same holds true for facets of internet security. If a person doesn’t pay attention when an email comes from an unknown source, or ignores the security tools (like pop-up blockers, “leaving secure page” warnings, image loading blocks on emails, phishing filters), then some new technology tool isn’t going to make the difference. The software tools help, but it’s the usage of those tools that really make a difference.
I think this will be a constant battle though between freedom and security and nothing well ever become a real “solution” that both sides will be happy with – but trying to find that happy medium is worth a bit of discourse so be sure to join in on it!

Pimping: For more geeky stuff filtered for the non-geek, visit Insomnic Dreams.

Yoshi and me were just chatting about the eventual death of both the PC and the mobile phone as we know them today when he asked me to test this FFAF-thingy for him. So since that happened, here I am.

So let me ask you the larger viewing audience than I have over at my site: Do you know what Flash Memory is? Do you know what a MicroSD card is? How do you feel about something like that replacing the CD and DVD so that PCs can become smaller? No more need for an optical drive. We’re past that now… it’s just that the industry has yet to really grasp that and catch up. We already get our music digitally. We can now get our HD movies digitally. Mac users have been stealing their software digitally for years. So why do we still have optical disks?

Have you seen the prices on Flash Memory lately? If not, take a look. You should get to know the future.

Hello true believers! Free for all Friday is upon us! What is Free for all Friday? It’s the last Friday of the month where YOU get to post on MY blog. That’s right! So here are some topic suggestions:

1. Poiltics – It’s election year folks. Talk about politics.
2. American Idol – Do you hate it? Love it? Everyone’s talking about it. Why not you?
3. Ever popular – Writer’s choice!

To make a post, head on over to the FFAF page. The rules are there. Enjoy!

This post will remain sticky until FFAF is over. Please scroll down to view all entries!