Saturday, May 20, 2006

Superman


The Tennessee Titans have superman on their team: Vince Young.
How many TDs will Vince throw in his rookie season? How many will he run?
What will his qb rating be?

Ironically, the first game in the NFL will be a preseason game against Reggie Bush's Saints. Interesting that they'll be on opposite sides of the ball again so quickly. Then again, so will LenDale White. Maybe they'll send him in on defense as a special RB spy.

silence hurts

"You annoy me, and I put up with you annoying me; therefore I have the right to annoy you, and you should put up with my annoying behavior and shouldn't complain to me."

I was just having this argument with myself, but it seems like something I might have heard once. This seems like such a lame argument. Let me tell you why.

Being annoyed silently makes it hard for me to other things (such as study, read, watching TV, or wash dishes even). When you aren't united because of disharmony, then you can kiss love, peace, and cooperation goodbye. We need those.

If a person is doing something to majorly annoy you, then you should let them know. That doesn't mean that you demand change, but rather just lets them know that you'd prefer to be not annoyed, so you need to come to peace with whatever is happening. The extremes would be that the annoyer modifies their behavior and that's it. The other extreme is that the annoyee learns to be happy with the annoyer continuing their behavior and nothing more. Somewhere between these two extremes is where we will probably end up.

Reasonable people are willing to modify their behavior at least slightly. For instance, if someone got annoyed by my eating yoghurt, then I wouldn't stop eating it. But I might avoid eating it whilst perched on the footboard of that person's bed every morning.

So when I tell you that something you do annoys me, then don't expect me to demand you to change completely. Instead, be prepared to discuss and compromise. We both have a right to our feelings. Also if a person wants to, they can take the time to inventory what you do that annoys them. We all annoy and get annoyed. Why not release the pressure? Why not end the silent suffering and come to terms with our surroundings?

Friday, May 19, 2006

Move over eBay!

Perhaps you have heard of the new Live Beta MSN applications being developed.

I think the most intriguing one for me is Windows Live Expo Beta. It's actually quite a bit different from eBay, since it's classified ads, not auctions. Ebay's buy-it-now option is pretty much like this, though.
Expo is a dynamic social listing service that allows members to find and sell items, discover information, and meet other parties in their area – all for free!

With Expo, you can browse and post listings to those you trust, like your buddies, co-workers, and fellow students, or, to all Expo visitors.

In addition, you can map listings easily using MSN Virtual Earth, post a free listing in less than a minute with our easy-to-follow steps, and use instant messages to communicate quickly with other members.

Apparently you can post items for sale for just your MSN buddies, or to other selected communities (college student peers, geogrphically selected people, etc.)

It'll be interesting to see how widespread it's use becomes.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

I made a wiki site for my family members to add to and edit. It can be found here.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

LOST in mystery

The first time I heard people talk about how I should watch the TV show "Lost," I thought, "Maybe never." If you had asked me to describe what I imagined the show to be, then I would have said, "I think it's like "Gilligan's Island," mixed with "Survivor" and a soap opera; and I knew it had a hobbit in it.

Well I've watched all the episodes now, and now I would describe it as a mix between "The X-Files" and some Stephen King novel. It's pretty wacky. And to make it even weirder, the show is dripping off of TV into other media: this is called The Lost Experience. You can begin the lost experience by going here. The only hint I'll give is that you should sign-up for the newletter. For me, it has a feelings to it sort of like the computer game Myst; but in this instance it's correlated with a TV show. Also the creators of Lost have been printing books and running advertisements in major newspapers to pique the curiosity of readers.

I was looking at a picture of an orangutang on the site, and it started to change. After a while the picture blinked, and I did a screen capture in which I got the pic below. Do you see a face in there?


Friday, May 05, 2006

Political Leanings

I took a quiz to see what it would say about my political views, in comparison to others. It says that I tend to be a bit more conservative economically and more libertarian socially.

"Your political compass Economic Left/Right: 2.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.72"


Most of the leaders of "the West" are very authoritarian, not surprisingly. I've noticed that political science majors I've met at BYU are very authoritarian. Here's the link.

Let me know what it tells you.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Feng Shui Phone Assistant


Finally, a piece of technology that brings peace and harmony.
link

Now I can relax.

Monday, May 01, 2006


link

My favorite head-to-head geoquiz game. Real-time online world map game!
Try it.