I will do this one, I suppose. I have a bad history of not doing them. I still owe Dave
one.

Four jobs that you have had in your life
Camp Counselor
Phone Tech Support at an ISP
IT Department “gopher” at a large IP legal firm
QA Engineer

Four movies you could watch over and over
Not Another Teen Movie
The Dreamers
Swingers
The Aristocrats

Four places you’ve lived
Newport News, VA
Northern VA
Northeast TN
The Triangle

Four TV shows you love to watch
The Office (BBC)
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Monday Night Football
Dukes of Hazzard

Four places you’ve been on vacation
OBX
Willemstad, Curacao
Toronto, Ontario
Myrtle Beach, SC

Four of your favourite foods
Pizza
Real (eastern Carolina) BBQ
Filet Mignon
Just about anything authentic sichuan.

Four sites I visit (almost) daily:
Raleighing
Daily Kos
CNN
Fark

Four [web]bloggers I am tagging
Catfish
Kewl
A`Kempis
Joelogon

Meet “Infosnacking”, Webster Dictionary’s Word of the Year.

From the article:

Say what? Webster’s New World College Dictionary has anointed infosnacking as its 2005 Word of the Year, despite its near-total absence from everyday use. Has it been in The New York Times? Nope. On CNN? Apparently not. Popular slang? Have you ever heard it, or used it?

“It hasn’t caught on yet,” admitted Mike Agnes, editor in chief of Webster’s. But the word of the year isn’t about popularity, he explains; there aren’t even any plans to add it to the dictionary.

I, for one, have heard it. I used to hear it probably at least once a day for a while, at The Old Place.

Funny, that just made me remember that it’s been just over a year since that day.

If you ever played NationStates, there is another game out there that looks to be pretty cool, if enough people get involved. Senate Seeker is an online game where you run for office and, if elected, debate and vote on bills.

It will be reset after beta stage is over — which is soon — but I’m hoping it picks up in popularity, as it seems like it might be fun!

I ended up getting one of those SMS.ac invites from my wife yesterday who inadvertently spammed everyone in her Yahoo mail list, thanks to the scheming techniques used by SMS.ac to “add all your friends” to your contact list there. In other words, you give them your yahoo (or hotmail) info, they login to your mailbox, and while “updating your contacts”, sends invites to everyone on the list.

Also note that this is done before one even fully activates an account.

And then there is this, from their terms of service page:

How Much Does It Cost?
* Each day send up to 5 FREE SMS (text messages) from the Web to mobile phones for 30 days. (A Only)
* $0.25 per mobile text message sent or received for B, C, D, E, and F (and A after first free msgs for 30 days).
* You may send STOP to 57413 to stop any of A, B, C, D, E, or F messages at any time.
* Free to receive messages by email. All charges occur on your mobile phone account.

A-F are different “levels” of users, with “A” being only known friends, etc.

However, note that you pay, after 30 days, for all messages received… and from what I’ve heard, you get ads too… and of course pay for those (although they are probably classified within B-F).

So… expect to be bitchslapped if I received these “invite” emailings from any others amongst you.

Thanks to helbnt for this one.

what the fuck is this shit?

Good lordy. If that’s not a sign of the impending apocalypse, I dunno what is.

Update, 2 minutes later: It’s a farce. Well, it’s real, but it’s still a farce. I should’ve seen the “Landover Baptist” link to the side, earlier. Or the text at the bottom of the product description.

I blame tonight’s Yuengling.

Forbes.com put up a somewhat amusing article in which they highlight their top ten nine “corporate hate” websites.

Despite the obvious lack of love I have for M$, there are two others on there for which my distaste has been fairly well-documented.

This said, I dunno, I… just can’t see spending so much time on a website like that. I got a little bit obsessive over the Verizon thing, but I don’t think a website like that does the trick, at least for me, to blow off steam. Being more proactive, writing the company and, if it comes down to it, letters to Important People and Publications always gives me more of a sense of accomplishment.

Then again, if those websites actually end up encouraging people to do the same, then more power to them.

From the bizzaro files… one part of me says this can’t possibly be true, but it’s a sad state of affairs that another part of me wouldn’t be surprised at all. According to the Sunday Mirror, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles will be considered personae non grata at the White House, due to their status — or at least hers — as divorcees:

The unprecedented snub has effectively sabotaged Charles’s plan to take his bride on a Royal tour of America later this year.

The trip would have been the pair’s first official tour as a married couple.

But the US President – a notoriously right-wing Christian and reformed alcoholic – told aides it was “inappropriate” for him to be playing host to the newly-weds, who are both divorcees.

The decision was made even though the late President Ronald Reagan was divorced.

A Government insider said: “It was relayed to us from Washington that Mrs Parker Bowles would not be welcome at the White House.

Maybe they should just try to pose as journalists, and get day passes, instead.

Gary nails it about perfectly, in my opinion, regarding this new weblog publicity service, BlogExplosion. The modern Internet has never been one of maturity, and as per usual, BlogExplosion looks to be the same puerile antics.

If I were in the same situation as Gary mentioned, would I get “mad” if someone rated me a one? No, and I certainly wouldn’t, in some weird revenge-laden moment, return the “favour” out of reciprocal spite, but at the same time, it’s still nothing I even need to get myself involved with, in the first place.

I’m a little smarter about these things now. It’s kinda along the same lines as what I said before about Friendster — I just don’t see the need to add more things to my agenda that can have the tendency to contribute to stress and animosity. I do find myself migrating, by choice, back to the outer edge these days, that’s for sure — even in times where I’m closer to the inner circle.

I’m sure there’s a little lesson of Dao in there somewhere, but I am not going to search for it.

It will be interesting to see just how much BlogExplosion takes off, or if it collapses under its own weight. The whole weblogging thing, to me, has seemed kind of “organic”, very much meme-based, where loose meshes of content are created by discovery. I don’t really mind ping services. and even things like Daypop kind of collects URLs and does a bit of statistical analysis, but still leaves it up to the reader to explore. BlogExplosion, however, does the discovery — if you can even call it that — for you. It’s like a 24-7 pizza buffet or something. It’s like people-watching at Wal-Mart — or perhaps more like dropping the same Wal-Mart down, smack in the middle of the Redwood Forest.

It is far too early to say whether BlogExplosion will have a big change on the weblog world, and admittedly, if it doesn’t, something else like it will, in all eventuality, succeed. It does signify a big change in how weblogs are accessed, however — though this sort of thing has, arguably, been evolving for a while now — and whether I necessarily like it or not, it’s going to happen.

In any case, when I first started weblogging in 2000, I said I was writing for me, and although it is fun, simply for the statistical side of things, to see how people encounter this weblog, I guess I don’t actively seek out a smorgasbord of readers, either.

I heard the new Howard Dean Yahoo! Local radio spot on WTOP this afternoon, and about lost it; it’s pretty funny, and really kind of catches you by surprise. Brilliant job on the part of Yahoo!… Although I am kind of sad that the scream wasn’t directly used in association with the signature yodel. I have a sneaking suspicion based the other Y!L ad I heard, that it was probably written into the script that way originally, but Dean was likely opposed to it.