It's been a while and I've got a bunch of stuff, but I'll keep it succinct.

First, today I finally felt like I got something accomplished at work instead of simply treading water. A lot of my projects take forever and it seems like I never make any progress. Today, I crossed a bunch of stuff off the "To-Do" list. This is after about 2 months of feeling overwhelmed, It's a good thing, trust me.

Last night - darts. We won 4 games out of 13. This is the most we have won in about a month. It'll be a long season....

I've gone ahead and paid for 6 months of ad-free space for the message board. I suggest you make me feel better and use it. {grin}

I took a look at the latest stats. This page is visited from people in 25 countries, including Tonga. Tonga? Cool. Also in the stats: There were almost 10,000 total web sites (that's the entires site, not just this page) between Nov 16 and now. Extra cool!

I'll be joining the writing staff at A Theme of Absence, writing periodical editorials. I think it'll be monthly - but we shall see. So if you can't enough of me here - go there to see my political side!

I'm really fighting the urge to redesign this page. I only put it up in August. Must .... wait.... at least .... one year......

Links a plenty today.

• Consumer Reports - Religion - A spoof on Consumer Reports, giving you the lowdown on several religions. {from Sara}
  
• In praise of bad habits - A rather lenghty transcript of a lecture dissing the health-concious culture we live in. Beware of "healthism"! {from daypop}
  
• Hidden stuff in the Sims:Hot Date - There's some hidden extras on the Sims:Hot Date installation. Look here for instructions.
  
• The Postmodernism Generator - This page creates something that pass for a highly analytical, yet thought-jumpy college essay - or a bunch of randomness.
  
• CG idols mean no human is required - This CNN article tells us of the new fad for falling for computer generated teen idols.

And now for a bunch of personality tests, all pointed to by /usr/bin/girl.

• e-bore - Are you an e-bore? I'm 70% e-bore!
  
• Pooh-Piglet Psychometric Personality Profiler - I'm mostly Eeyore. (Gee, I'm Eeyore and an e-bore...)
  
• Lord of the Rings Character Test -

  Gandalf the Grey If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Gandalf, Wizard, a guardian against the Dark Lord. In the movie, I am played by Ian McKellen. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software

Well, that last one makes me feel better. 'Nuff said!

erf, I feel bad. I woke up violently last night/this morning around 2:00 am with this nasty coughing/acid reflux combo. It was not pleasant. I'm not sure if I'm going into work tomorrow or not, as I felt absolutley wasted when I got home today. I had to go as I was teaching my last class of the semester. Yeah!

Quick list? You want your quick list? Well here it is!

• My Virtual Model - Make a likeness of yourself to "try" on clothes at participating web sites.
  
• Paladin's Place - A site to get some neat tools for The Sims.
  
• Buzzwhack - See definitions for the buzzwords of today. Find out what "Viral marketing" and "greenwash" mean, along with many others.
  
• Kevin Spacey loses rights to kevinspacey.com - This Register article tells of the recent court case involving actor Kevin Spacey and how he can't get the domain name "kevinspacey.com"
  

Yesterday Julie and I went up to her parents to celebrate Thanksgiving with her side of the family. It was all right. I didn't end up getting bruised from playing with my 13 nieces and nephews on that side of the family like I normally do. (Not all of them were there, but I'd say 90% were...)

A couple of additions, first my personal wishlist and mentioned before, but now added the Emerald Fusion store.

Anyway less talk, more links!!

• Colorgenics - By choosing colors, you are given a profile. Interesting.
  
• Star Wars in ASCII - See Star Wars as a collection of "text" characters. Very interesting! {You will need a telnet program to view it. Most computers already have one so no worries, mate.}
  
• Yahoo grows up - Less youth and energy, more marketing. Oh and less jobs as well! Oh brother....
  
• Left handed Whoppers - Its an old press release, but it made me laugh.
  
• Brosnan is the sexiest man alive - So Sean Connery was once the sexiest and now Pierce Brosnan. Do you have to be British and have played James Bond to qualify?
  
• Unfinished Douglas Adams work to be published - Hey, this would be the sixth book in the Hitchickers Guide to the Universe almost but not quite Trilogy?
  
• The Canonical List of Weird Band Names - from Ana, I actually have heard music from a couple of these bands! {warning adult language all over this one...}
  
• Joseph Sobran Editorial: "May I advocate the violent restoration of the Constitution?" - from Jason over at A Theme of Absence.
  

And now some weblogs I've found interesting lately. As always, they are expressing their own views and emotions, so there may be "mature content"

• RuPaul - That's right, RuPaul. It's rather interesting to see him without the wig...
  
• Phoxxe - Neat layout
  
• This Month's Flavor of the Week
  
• CrackBamBlog

Howdy Doo!

Julie and I hit the Sheldon art museum on campus today to check out the Comic art exhibit. Well, ok I went to see it, Julie went to see other things there - but anyway - it was ok. I felt that the collection over emphasized Will Eisner and didn't have nearly enough Alex Ross, Jack Kirby, Moebius. Each only had one or two pieces. Steranko wasn't even represented! ERF! Most of it was based on newspaper strips instead of the comic books so I supposed that's why all the emphasis on Eisner. Don't get me wrong Eisner is da man. He created a lot of the visual tricks used by todays hacks. I would have liked to see something that gave a thourough representation from the early days to todays artists, though. Three pieces by Sheldon Moldoff - none of them showing the Green Lantern, a character he created - and none by Todd McFarlane or Erik Larsen? No Gil Kane, no Carmine Infantino, no Steve Ditko - who know, the guy who created Spider-man with Stan Lee? That's a more than a little skewed toward the Golden Age. Oh well - at least there was an exhibit. Beggers can't be choosers, or least shouldn't be. I understand that it all came from somebody's personal collection - so maybe that's all that he was into.

BTW: I did have my butt planted for the 11 hours of Iron Chef yesterday. Loved it! Watched Iron Chef and went through some comics during commercials. I was a very happy man. :)

Yesterday was Thanksgiving at my parents and it was a blast. I think my sister said it all when she said "I'm eating and I'm not even hungry, it just all tastes so good!" And it was - I hadn't eaten like that in a while. But it wasn't all about food. We were thankful that we were all there and not in the hospital. We were thankful that everyone had a roof over their head and weren't in immediate danger of losing it. We were thankful that the future looked good for all of us.

Speaking of food ... today is the Iron Chef marathon on FoodTV. 11 hours of culinary competition! I'm parking myself in front of that tv in 45 minutes to watch it all!

Didn't do much work today on the ol' web page, had to do all those pre-Thanksgiving errands. (Like picking up comics.. ) It was pointed out to me that someone actually posted on the message board.. Now maybe I will get lucky and someone will actually buy something from the "store" Only a couple of things there, I might add more if people desire. Why am I doing this? Well, to help offset the cost of owning this. Do I expect to get rich? No. I started up the store so I could get stuff for myself and if anyone else happens to like it - then fine. Well, tallyho and all that.

I've done a bit more linking today. Not much else going on as I'm on vacation and I'm enjoying not doing much of anything. I'll be working on the stuff for sale a little - hopefully I'll be done with that before Thanksgiving. ta ta.

I went to church today. Read that last sentence again. I went to church today. Now for some this wouldn't mean much, but for some reason it meant a bunch to me. For one thing, I don't trust many of the churches here in town ever since I almost got sucked into a cult posing as a church. I really haven't trusted churches for a while now. The one where I went as a kid - I trusted. The one my wife works at - I trust. The ones my friends went to - I guess I would consider them ok, but I had no interest in going to them. I trusted in my own understandings and inspirations more than anything. And now in the day and age where a lot more Americans are running back to their churches and synagogues I'm among the crowd. It has a lot do with Julie wanting to find a church as well.

Anyway, it went ok, I liked the service - it wasn't a "fire and brimstone" type, but an uplifting, joyful service. Nice.

Before some of you get jumpy - don't worry, I won't get all evangelical here. I view religion as a very personal item so there's no nead to beat people over the head with it. I just felt like mentioning it here.

Not much else to say today. Peace. Out.

Well, I've gotten some work done on the page. I'm second guessing the whole Links idea so if you've got any opinions on 'em fire them off to me or make a note in the message board.

BTW: Happy Birthday Ray! See ya later tonight!

Just got finished watching Cast Away with Julie tonight. Not a bad film. I know - its been out for a while, but I never got a chance to see it before.

I got an email about an online IQ test that I had taken a while ago. They've reposted the results. If you want to see them, you can look here - but I think that they are artifically "boosted" so you feel more like buying ther certificate.

The big news here is I've opened up a message board! I've got a free 7 day trial at Gold level over at ezboard, so give it a try. If you like it - pitch in and I'll get the gold version (unless you really like pop-up ads....) Run, don't walk to the Emerald Fusion message board! Expect to see some changes throughout the week as I tinker with the settings.

Time for the seemingly traditional "Quick Picks"..

• Bruce Lee's Fantastic Comeback - A Korean maker plans on using a computer generated likeness of Bruce Lee in his next film. {from Daypop}
  
• Girl dies after being hit 160 time by her parents - I couldn't believe it when I read it. If you get upset easily, you may want to pass this one by... {also from Daypop}
  
• Monster Movie Pitch - A kind of mad libs thing for horror movies {from Ana}
  
• Animal Blind Date - Find what type of animal you should date. It said I should look into peacocks. Whatever... {also from Ana}
  
• Fifteen Minutes of Flame - "A literary agent found himself dazed and patting out flames when he arrived at a two-alarm house fire equipped with a sandwich, a bullhorn, whiskey and a lawnchair. He settled into his seat perched on the roof...." {from Alex}
  

Scott, Scott Where have you been?

I've been playing Sims:Hot Date and Civ 3.

But why have you neglected your blogging?

um, cause I've been playing Sims: Hot Date and Civ 3....

Why haven't you returned anybody's email?

well, ummm, I've been playing Sims:Hot Date and Civ 3...

Scott, don't you have a real life?

I used too, and then I got Civ 3 and Sims:Hot Date in the mail....

{Julie will attest to this behavior....}

Anyway here's a bunch of links and articles, just to keep ya'll happy. I promise to do more with the page during my vacation next week, that is if I'm not playing Sims: Hot Date and Civ3 all week long....

• The Deserted Library - An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on what some libraries are trying to do to get students back into their buildings.
  
• Funky Lights - A catalog of unusual and wonderfully quirky light fixtures and lamps. {from /usr/bin/girl}
  
• pebkac.net - A collection of one technical help line person's experiences with novice computer users. Really funny for those of us who have to answer these types of questions everyday. {also from /usr/bin/girl}
  
• The World's Longest Tounge - An article about a schoolgirl's record breaking tongue. And I thought Gene Simmons from KISS had that record.. {from little.yellow.different}
  
• The Brick Testament - This is ... disturbing. Some famous stories of the Bible done in Lego - with all of the gore and sex. I'm not sure if it's sacrelegious or informative, but it is odd.
  
• Honda 'Asmio' Robot - An article about a very human like robot that's being hired as a secretary. {from slashdot.org}
  
• Recording artists file brief supporting Napster - So the musicians are going against the RIAA and for Napster. So who's stealing from whom? cough cough bigrecordlabels cough cough... {from slashdot.org}

Another plane goes down in NY. Of course everyone here at work is thinking another terrorist attack. I cut the class short and now have the news on the projector. It doesn't sound like a terrorist attack, but there just isn't enough info to say yeah or nay. One theory (which is highly improbible) is a flock of birds got sucked into the engine.

I guess it was a good day today. It started a bit rough as Julie and I had a discussion that went wrong. I will admit - I got a little too defensive and that got things going in the wrong direction. We talked through it and then went out to go do "stuff". We ate out at Boston Market and then went and saw Monsters, Inc. It was filled with a lot of kids and I felt a little out of place as it was just Julie and I. But it was fun and now we can't stop saying "kitty" to each other.

A neat article was in Salon the other day - dealing with a fan's "remake" of Star Wars Episode I. Make sure you look at The Phantom Edit

Another interesting site is the Smurf Name Generator. I'm now known as Stoolie Smurf!

Sorry about not updating the "Popular Last Month's" section, but due to some unknown problems on the host's part - my log files were all deleted. Oh well. Later gators!

It's Friday afternoon, and a lot of people aren't here at work either on vacation or on long meetings. I really should be completing a training module, returning email messages, finishing Monday's handouts for class and a million other things. So what am I doing? I'm cathing up on a back log of blogging.. How wrong is that? Oh well, there's still plenty of time left in today to get work done.

Last night was dart night and our team got spanked. We went 2-11 last night. To put in perspective the opposing team's cricket average was over a 2.0 Marks Per Round, the highest on our team was 1.9. It was not very pretty. It's going to be a long season. erf!

I've been playing Civ 3 for a few days, and I really like it! People had told me that I would have to change the way I play - but I haven't had to at all. Of course I never really played Civ 2 as a wargame as a lot of people have. And I've only tried the easiest levels. {grin}

Enough jibber jabber - time to pass out the links!

• The Smarks - Home of some pro-wrestling results and opinions.warning - strong lanuage used
  
• Cooking By Numbers - You tell it what you have on hand, and it finds easy recipies that use those items.
  
• The Jive Server - Put in some text and it translates it into Jive talkin' sucka!
  
• a blog in my stank a$$ shoes - A blog from a bartender in NYC. warning - strong lanuage and themes used
  
• MyFreeToolbox - free Javascript things for your webpage.

I'll be adding a few new things by popular request: a message board and an Emerald Fusion "gear" store where you can buy stuff with the EF logo on it. But first - I need to design a logo.... Hopefully things will be rolling before Thanksgiving.

I'm just now beginning to feel better, thanks for asking. However there might not be too much updating going on for a while as I've got my copy of Civ 3 now, so I'll be a bit busy with that for the next couple of days. :)

Not much today, I did a little bit of updating, but I'm just not feeling well enough to do the monster update I had hoped to do. Maybe tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime here's a neat little site The Invisible Library that lists books within books. Kind of a neat list. Another neat thing is Iron Chef Reverse Engineered Recipies. An attempt to recreate some of those crazy recipies off the wonderful show, Iron Chef.

{Found out that the IP for my page changed and I forgot to update blogger.com. That explains why the past few days haven't shown..}

Oof. I started out today feeling downright nasty. Couldn't breathe and my stomach ached. Almost didn't go to work today. But I did and I feel better now. Yippie! I'm just killing time until darts tonight. I haven't thrown in a couple of weeks so I hope my form is still there.

I have to say that actor Gene Hackman is the man. Read this article about how he held his own in a fight over an auto accident.

I'm a fan of the Hobbit and I'm a fan of name generators - so here's one that I really liked. The Hobbit Name Generator.

Want to know how different religions' creation stories? You should look at The Big Myth to see them. If you have a fast Internet connection you can see the really neat animations that go with them.

Speaking of fast internet connections - I go out and buy a new machine, it has Windows XP installed. Great. I go to hook up my Roadrunner cable internet service. It doesn't work. huh? I call tech support and they say, "We don't support Windows XP". erf! For more info, look at this article from InternetNews.