I wonder what happens when one puts soap in a microwave?

No! Don't do it!

Some people did it, and the result is entertaining to watch.

Still, I don't recommend you do it.

Today's word of the day is underwhelming.

Seriously.

There might be a habitable planet out there.

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It has about the same size as Earth and similar temperatures. Of course, keep in mind that Mars meets those conditions. Yes, this is something that might fall through.

But, when we completely ruin our planet and jettison out into space... at least we'll know where to look first.

Today's word of the day is "Mythomania," a knack for lying or exaggerating often.

And by word of the day, I mean, "holy cow it's midnight."

Well, it's the end of season blues. Since I always seem to find myself in the lowest division possible, relegation means being fired. Or so I believe. So, this season didn't go too well. I changed my tactics from being insane to moderately normal, and we almost climbed out of 22nd position. However, we lost in the end and were relegated. Of course, there's a delay between the end of season and being fired. So, I await the best.

Then it was June and I hadn't been fired yet. Either something very good is happening, or it's just going to happen later. I sure hope it's the former.

Then I got that bad feeling you get when you know something bad is just around the corner. Oh well, at least I get to watch the world cup. Also, I saw that my signing of a particular defender was considered the worst signing of the season. Seeing as how this is Conference North and it was for $2k... Well, I just like to think that says something about Conference North.

And pow, there goes the sack. Now the inevitable job search shall begin.

Whooh. I got a new job. I don't know much about this team; I barely even remember its name. It begins with a “t.” Also, the colors are yellow. Oh how I hate yellow. Also, they're newly promoted. When will these people ever learn? I'll be back with more information, later.

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Well, I would have liked to reproduce the entire article, as it is short, but the Associated Press wouldn't let me. Don't blame them, they were the ones who told me about this.

The gist of it; there's a competition for fast texters (think cell phone), and a girl won it. She texted that magical word from Mary Poppins in 15 seconds.

Can you do that?

If so, do you need an agent?

Oh my gosh...

There's going to be a football manager MMORPG. I mean, I liked playing offline and all, but come on. Odds are, I'll get this. And when I do, I'll let you all know. I'll finally get to see just how poorly I measure up to real people.

Oh rants, you so crazy.

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It seems Prince Edwards has suddenly become availible.

Good luck, ladies.

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It seems Open Office might soon become a web based application. This would just be cool, okay?

Wouldn't that be awesome? To be able to write anything anywhere? As long as you had an internet connection, that is. Still, I sure hope this doesn't replace the offline version.

Don't you hate it when you're about to tell someone something, but you stop to ask yourself, "Have I already talked to them about this?" Like, if it wasn't the person, then you'd have to explain it. If it was, then they would knod knowingly.

That is the very definition of a lose lose scenario.

OC Remix Mix CD

Have you ever heard of OC Remix? No? Never? Man, it's one of the best places to go for video game music. What? You don't like video game music? It's remixed, so it sounds incredibly different from the normal beeps and blips. Interested? Here is a CD I put together of OC Remix tracks that I think are pretty darn good.

Note; Tracks listed in order, names are based on filenames; which are pretty funky, links lead to Remix 's page; go to downloads tab to download

1.F-Zero X Expansion Kit Beyond Lightspeed
2.Earthbound Bus!
3.Zelda 64 Falling Back
4.Plok Title Jam
5.Gunsmoke Spaghetti Cowboy
6.Gunsmoke the Smoking Guns of Liberation
7.Donkey Kong Country Thrash the Plank
8.Speedball Speedy Guitar
9.Made in USA (Ken Stage) [Blood on the Asphalt CD]
10.Tecmo Cup Razors Theme (Guts Mix)
11.Chrono Trigger Lavos Battle
12.Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 9 Knight Come Marching Home
13.Final Fantasy 6 The Atomizer
14.Herzog Zwei Breach of Contract
15.The Doomsday [Project Chaos CD]
16.R U Overdrive (Ryu Stage) [Blood on the Asphalt CD]
17.Battletoads and Double Dragon Enter the Toad
18.Phantasy Star 4 Phantasy is a Four Letter Word
19.Zelda 64 Late Night Lullaby
20.Super Hang On Outride a Crisis
21.Super Hang On Hard Road
22.Super Hang On Sprinter
23.Super Hang On Winning Run

"You don't have to hold my arm like that."
"Yeah, I think I do."

"Yeah I'm right!"

"Okay, let's stick to my off-topic topic, please."

Where was the most toxic spill ever dropped?

On your face. Sorry about that.

"Assez-vous? I hate assez-vous."

I like how when you wake up twice in one day, it feels like two different days.

Found on the bottom of Spinning T Company Stationary;

"Do not waste company stationary."

Oh my gosh... Do you hear the scamperings of little feet? Are you sure? It could be THE GREAT MOLERAT!

Somebody hide me!

So, I decided to chronicle my adventures in Football Manager 2007 as the manager, “Terrible Edward.”. I've been playing for some time, so let's first catch up.

I started in the beginning of the 2007 [in game] season for Kelmis, one of the few teams to hire me based on my nonexistant credentials. They were a team struggling against telefation, and we did. We fought it off the first year. I didn't have much in the way of budget, but they did have some good players. The next year, we didn't do so well. I thought we could pull off winning, but I went on vacation near the end of the season and was surprised to find our team relegated and myself out of a job. So I reapplied. I found myself with C.D. Toledo, a newly promoted (into the lowest possible league) Spanish team. I had some money to spend, but it wasn't really a sizeable sum. They did horribly, and near the end I did everything I could to escape the wreck.

The next team I signed up with was a newly promoted team (in Conference North/South). These newly promoted teams sure do like me, no? Since they were rich, I had quite some fun finding good people to hire. I even had to hire staff! I find myself near the middle of the year and at the bottom of the league (or close to it). Personally, I think I'm cursed somehow. Well, check back later to see how it all works out.

"On the internet, no one knows you're a dog."
But on Myspace, everyone just assumes it.

Won't someone please think of the bees!?

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"Haven't you heard the phrase, 'ladies and children first?' I'm a children."

Are you excited for the olympics? No, not those olympics. The one where Mario charcters face off against Sonic characters!

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Just how important are the limits of human sensation? Quite important. They can even relate to the current media "crisis" with mp3's.

Mp3's are usually not the best quality possible for listening to music. It is a standard made to be small, not spot on. Of course, mp3's come in different degrees of quality.

So now the EMI is offering 256 kbps mp3's instead of 128kbps mp3's for just a little more. However, the issue is whether or not you can hear the difference.

So enters human sentaion, and more importantly, perception. Perhaps they give your ear different vibrations, but you couldn't hear the difference? That's because your perception is a little off.

Of course, it could just be that there's no difference in your hardware for hearing music.

So, is it worth it?

According to The Guardian - Technology Blog;

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" With the average PC set-up, or a typical portable music player, I reckon most people would find it hard to tell the difference in a double-blind test. Playing the same files through a good quality hi-fi should make them more obvious, possibly very obvious. "

What's something that we cannot touch, taste, or otherwise sense, yet affects us often?

What do you mean there's more than one answer!?

From an article found on ZDNet, written by Marc Orchant;

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" So David from 37Signals dropped the f-bomb in a particularly myopic post wherein he tries to argue that we don't need offline functionality from online applications because, "like dude… we're all connected ll [sic] of the time and why don't you read a book or something when you're on a plane?". This unsurprisingly (and perhaps by design?) screed has generated an emotional comments thread (now 200 deep and sure to get bigger) in which folks from around the world do their best to educate the author (and presumably his pals at the company) as to the reality outside the world of a developer living in a major US city. It's great intertubes drama if you're a fan of that sort of thing. "

The whole post starts about offline versus online applications, then transitions to how the web is changing.

As for what I think about offline versus online applications, I think that offline applications should still exist. I wouldn't trust both the server and my connection to said server when making something important. Without a stable internet connection, it's a real pain. I'd much sooner trust my computer than my internet connection. I would say that I'm personally very biased towards offline applications.

From the same article;

" The net generation has never known a world without the network. They have different expectations and experiences than I (we) do. As a result, their comfort level about working online is profoundly different. They approach the idea of work and career differently that we have and they use mobile and net technologies in a dramatically different, and much more personal, way than most of us in the pre-net generation.Have you watched twenty-somethings use MySpace? I have – I sta next to my daughter (22) and her roommate (20) yesterday watching them cruise their social networks – and it's nothing like the way I use the tubes. "

I don't know how these wunderkinds use the internet, but I can say that an adult and a child both use the internet differently. I will agree that the net is changing, and so are the people that use the internet. However, the past is not always wrong. just because the office model seems antiquated nowadays doesn't mean it can't work for future generations.

Well, that's more than my 2 cents worth.

why does Google have such a weird name? What is the story behind it? Wired News - Monkeybites had a link to the Wikipedia article that explains most of them.

Wikipedia Article

As Wired News - Monkeybites so kindly pointed out, something as disputed as the origins of a company name, also on Wikipedia, does not spell reliability. However, it does spell fun.

From Wired News - Monkeybites;

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"Kevin Poulsen has noted the death (and birthday) of telnet on 27B Stroke 6. Microsoft has apparently decided to release the Vista OS without a telnet client, a first for Windows."

If you don't remember telnet, it was the text based system used to contact other places. No, not command prompt.

Personally, I only used Telnet in the very few times I ever played a MUD. But man, some of those times were great.

But don't worry, possible MUD lovers. There are many ways to connect to the MUD servers other than Telnet.

Still, it is sad to see a good program dying.

Oh yes...

Just a warning; there's a Friday the thirteenth coming up next week.

From FunniestGadgets.com;

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“Rocket Fishing Rod casts lines over 30 feet. to reach prime angling spots. Simple pump-and-launch action eliminates snares and tangled lines. Bobber keeps hook safely hidden until it hits the water, ideal for teaching kids.”

Now that is cool enough to get me thinking about fishing. Although... would fishing with a harpoon be cooler?

This is an oldie-but-a-goodie.

From the short Wikinews article;

In Estonia, a mouse made its nest in a cash machine and spent the weekend eating tens of thousands of kroons in bank notes. The critter was discovered after a customer making a withdrawal got half-eaten bills from the machine.

“ At some stage over the weekend the chewed money jammed, and the mouse seems to have spent the rest of the weekend turning the notes into bedding. It probably was attracted by the warmth from the machine and decided to make itself at home. ”
— Kristina Tamberg, spokeswoman for Hansapank Bank in Tallinn.

Experts are now investigating how the rodent was able to get into the ATM.

And, if you're really a stickler for tradition...

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Yes! I am free from that last This Week in News ordeal. Of course, I still need to post the announcement on my rants page, but still...

I'm free!

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Microsoft rolls out a bigger memory card. But what I want to know is who cares?

I have never used a memory card since the N64. And I've regretted it on few occasions.

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Did you know that livers can be cut in half, and still grow? With that concept in mind, doctors are working to make donations of liver to infants more common.

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This is what could possibly be the most dangerous car security system known to man.

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A great math mystery is solved.

And the answer is huge in size.

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Soon, a few diseases can by diagnosed by taking a sample of saliva. Granted, it's just a few autoimmune diseases. But those are nasty, and it's not that hard to just take a saliva sample.

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Don't buy drugs off the internet. They killed a person.

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A burrowing dinosaur has been found in Montana. Montana just got slightly more interesting.

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To celebrate the new registrar, many people participated in a giant group wedding. they did this to combat racism, as the new registrar is black, to which some have taken offense to. Crazy offense, that has no place in civilized society.

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It seems that Wikipedia has officially been banned as a primary source for in some colleges.

How ironic that I read that in a wikinews story.

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Take that, haters of sprites!

It seems that the prior-gen version of TMNT, the one for gameboy advance, fared much better than its DS cousin. The DS version used ugly 3d graphics. The gameboy used sprites. Guess which one is better?

I always knew sprites were better.

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Did you know that Bill Gates never finished college? He left to work on microsoft. He has recently received a degree from Harvard for his accomplishments.

So... he has finished college. Just, in the school of hard knocks.

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A project is underway in Belgium that lets people meet with prisoners. This is mainly to dispell the all too common myths regarding prisoners and prison.

What if Myspace gave you an overall score based on all measures of popularity?

Actually, no. That would make it pathetic.

You know what? Forget you, rants page. I'm going to post my news here. So, just wait for me to get around to posting all that news I've supposedly been saving up. Then I'll post new things. It'll be great.

From The Futility Closet;

Physicist James Van Allen outlived his own obituary writer.

As Van Allen approached old age, the Associated Press assigned writer Walter Sullivan to prepare a story that could be published on his death. Sullivan did so and died in 1996, but his story sat in the file for 10 more years before Van Allen finally passed away at 91.

This is awesome.

"People nowadays are too civilized to be afraid of."

"Okay, let's stick to my off-topic topic, please."

"Assez-vous? I hate assez-vous."

I like how when you wake up twice in one day, it feels like two different days.

Has anyone noticed a distinct lack in freeware font creators?

Oh well, I've looked long and hard, and I think I may have found a temporary fix.

Still, it does take time to make a font. And I had such a good idea, too...

"...But with a little help from moses and a lot of wrath from god..."

www.history.com, the day before easter, 2007

"This is confusing."
"Uh-huh."

"Are you going to the restroom or the bestroom?"

Teacher; "We're going to start right now."
(firedrill)

The best part? It actually happened.

What do ferris powder, ferris wheels, and Ferric Chloride all have to do with the word of the day?

Nothing. That was a red herring.

Today's word of the day is Clepsydra. What could this magical word be?

It's a water clock. The word's origin is assumedly (on my part) to be Greek.

So, why not go out into the work and start replacing normal person clocks with water clocks?

Because normal person clocks are better than water clocks. The Greeks would totally have made the switch, if they were availible.

"Set unreasonably high expectations for yourself, so you can tremble when you meet them."

"I didn't fail, I just suceeded differently."
"What, got more red marks than pencil marks?"

"That's what you get for thinking!"

This weapon is from Wikimedia Commons.

Wait, what?!

"There comes a point in time in most boy's lives when they can no longer be seen in public with their mothers."
"Oh yeah? And when is that?"
"Anytime after the mother's funeral."

"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top." -An English Professor, Ohio University

In Oregon, if you listen to a certain bird's call just right, it says, "Vote for Nader. Vote for Nader."

Watch out for sneaker waves. You don't want to be killed by a bunch of shoes.

So a store's policy is, "you break it, you but it." What if I broke a bottle of alcohol? Could they let me buy it, even though I'm a minor?

Were brine shrimp the inspiration for quantized energy?

As few of you know, I was gone for some time. Of course, the trip gave me some new ideas. So, without further ado, here is the next batch of random thoughts.