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I guess I have a blind spot

A part of my post here about Drupal is quoted on a BlogHer post about the lack of women at the latest DrupalCon in Boston. It's all because I left a comment on Shelley Powers' site. Rats, I need to hide more.

Canadian students come to the same conclusion as I did on the Wii

According to this Reuters story, it seems some Canadian university students did a similar Wii experiment as the one I described previously, and came to the same conclusion:

Random links

A Happy yet sad web comic, NetNewsWire is free!, and more.

The day I was mistakenly charged $27,500 on my Amex

Now I can chuckle at it but back then, it wasn't nice. One of the big brouhahas yesterday was that Dreamhost, a popular web site hosting service, made a pretty stupid billing error that caused their customers to be erroneously billed millions of dollars.

Really not as cool as you think

In the things-that-made-me-chuckle department, from this page:

Dear person in their 20's who thinks that having a tattoo, listening to Imogen Heap, wearing Converses, and collecting Absolut paraphenalia makes you different:

You're not. Everyone under 30 has a tattoo. Everyone listens to Imogen Heap. Everyone wears Converses. Everyone loves the Absolut bottle. When I go out at night, I can't spit in the air without hitting a Scene Kid who wears his mama's leggings and flat-irons his hair for the sake of "indiviuality." Imagine a kid in the 1980's who thinks that his moussed hair and loud neon shirts make him stand out in the crowd. That's you--you're the 2008 version of him.

And as another poster says on the same page, it's not just people in their 20s either.

How to cancel something on the phone in minimal time

It's the 10th day of the new year, and I'm deep into a satisfying process of decluttering my life. Besides getting rid of two jumbo bags of unwanted clothes (those funny conference giveaway t-shirts must multiply like bunnies in the closet) I've also called up and cancelled a number of subscriptions and services that I don't really want to continue.

It's quite annoying that so many places want you to call them to cancel, when they let you sign up oh-so-easily online. But of course they do so in the hope that the customer service rep can try to talk you out of cancelling.

When I make the effort to call a number to cancel, my mind is firmly made up that I am not going to renew or whatever under any circumstances. On the other hand, I don't want to get into a protracted argument with the rep person, who is after all only doing her job.

Getting fit with Wii Sports is a big fat delusion (updated)

If you're thinking of getting a Wii to get fit, think again, for now anyway.(See updates at the end.)

For Christmas, I finally got a Wii. Yes I'm quite behind the times, but I'm not really one who likes to jump on new stuff as soon as it comes out. I prefer to get the version 2s.

This is the first gaming console I've ever gotten. I've never been tempted by other consoles, ever. I do play the occasional PC game, but a dedicated machine for gaming? Nah.

What lured me to the Wii was the promise that somehow, it would help me to exercise.

The bad thing about it-Bay orrent-Tay

The ability to download whatever one wants with no restrictions has its disadvantages.

Dan Fogelberg

Dan Fogelberg passed away on Sunday, at the young age of 56, of prostate cancer. At one time, in my teens specifically, his kind of music - bittersweet folk songs - was my favorite, whether in English or Japanese, which was sort of unusual since I wasn't of music-cogniscant age during their real heyday of the early '70s or so.

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