Try This At Home

Just for fun, pretend you were someone else. Someone who only knew your name and the city in which you live or work or go to school. Take that information and see how much personal information you can find about you online using google, pipl, whitepages.com, etc. If you can find it, so can Anyone.

I was surprised at what I found about me. And that's without paying $20 for a more in depth report from one site.

Whether you're amused or disturbed about how much and what kind of information can be found online about you, it is still good to know that the net is a very, very public place. And if you delete something, it could live on, cached, in the databases of Google or someone else for a very long time. This came to me after reading (another) article about how young kids should be warned about putting personal info online and blah blah blah, but it reminded me of some article I read a while back where the journalist doing the article interviewed some internet search guru who took 20 minutes and pulled up all kinds of info about the journalist, which surprised him/her. Don't remember what article it was though, it was a while back.

FYI

By the way, we're up to 1248 posts (including saved drafts) on this blog. Aren't you all proud of us?

Books

So, I don't know how many of you have a facebook profile, but if you do...you should check this out.
My friend and I are starting a book club on there.
So, if you're interested and have a profile, find me and add me as a friend (Heather Marie Carlson) and I'll invite you to the group. Our first book is Ulysses by James Joyce.
Yay for Fall Break!

That is awesome

Here are some other awesome things:

Privately-owned nuclear weapons are legal in 47 states, though they must be registered with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the State Department.

A variation of the idiom "easy as pie" exists in almost every major language, ranging from "simple as cooking wontons" in Chinese to "easy as making snow-cake" in Swedish.

Montana is the only state that does not enforce a speed limit on elevators.

And finally:

Vehicles at the U.S. bases in Antarctica have the lowest auto insurance rates available in the U.S. due to the complete lack of vehicle-on-vehicle accidents.

White Hat, Gray Hat, Blue Hat, etc.

Hey y'all! It's just your friendly neighborhood Jason stopping by to let you know that our lovely Band Geek page is currently sitting at #11 in Google's ranking for the term "band geeks." Not bad. Could be better, but not bad. :)

If only I had the time/resources to do this... The complete schematics diagram to build your own theremin!

And completely unrelated, but phenomenally cool, M.C. Escher with Legos.

Be Prepared

Congress has drafted in advanced a dozen laws and three constitutional amendments in preparation for the invention of the first fully conscious artificially created robotic human.

Also this:

The UPC code 4815162342 had been assigned to the 8 oz. can of New Coke, introduced on 4/23/1985 and discontinued on 8/16/1992. It is unclear whether the connection to the TV show Lost is coincidental or intentional on the part of its producers.

Update:

The Zen of the cube.

Being able to solve Rubiks cube very fast is a near useless skill, that takes a lot of time to acquire, and does not typically impress the opposite sex. If you think you have better things to do, I can only agree. You probably have.

Still, I think that learning to do something really well is important for anybody, and it's not too important what it is. If you have mastered one thing, it is a bit easier to master others. And doing something you're really good at is uplifting, relaxing and fun.

So if you want to strive for perfection in some field, cubing is certainly cheaper than golf!

That's Chicago

Hi Jon,
I also am quite jealous of your visit to Chicago. I used to want to visit New Orleans, but not as much now that it got put under the ocean. But ever since I saw the reality series "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss," I've wanted to visit the windy city. So Kudos to you.

For all those instrumentalists: Consider this an invitation to come work with my students at Ben Lomond High School. I teach Band, Orchestra, Jazz Band, and Bagpipes, and would welcome any help on any of that instrumentation. To get a hold of me for scheduling info and purposes, contact me at jensenc which is located at the ogdensd period org email address.

Quote of the Day

"Some days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win, some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. This goes on and on and then you die and the horn wins."
- Dizzy Gillespie

So not fair

Jon, I am so jealous that you're in Chicago! I miss it so much!!! It's a really cool place and it sounds like you're having fun.

K, I just had to get that little jealous moment out of me, later.

Hello from Windy City

Just sitting here noodling around waiting for my first session (Hands On: Deploying Flex and HTML/JavaScript Applications to Adobe Integrated Runtime) at the Adobe MAX 2007 Conference.

The scoop:

I like Adobe. They make good software, and they are in tune with where the industry is headed. They appear to have good leadership in directing their efforts to meet the current and coming needs of developers of everything from audio to video to websites to applications to print media.

The flight to Chicago was both uneventful and enjoyable as flying has typically been in the past for me. I like the takeoff - I admit it. It's like a theme park ride.

Chicago has tall buildings. Salt Lake City is kind of small in comparison. But I like it that way. Still, it's quite the experience to see the big city.

The breakfast this morning wasn't too bad, and the opening General Session (the keynote) was quite a kick. They announced some fun new toys, most of which are available on labs.adobe.com right now. One of the ones that I'm very interested in is the new Adobe Media Player (AMP). And I'm sure my boss is going to absolutely love the Google Analytics AIR app.

Well, we're getting started here, so I'll check in again later.

Peace

P.S. I've got pics on my flickr photostream and more commentary on my blog.