News Tewsday (A week plus a day late) - 1/2/2008

• After home-sales drop, what to watch in 2008 (2007-12-29)
• Junk Science: Top 10 Climate Myth-Busters for 2007 (2007-12-27)
• [+2068] Lego Portal (2007-12-27)
• [+3945] The coolest animated .GIF tiled background perhaps ever (2007-12-27)
• New Dell PC Design Rivals the iMac (2007-12-28)
• Apple Stock Breaks the $200 Barrier for First Time (2007-12-26)
• GOP Race Wide Open (2007-12-20)
• Apple Rumor Site to Shut Down in Settlement - New York Times (2007-12-21)
• Shave time off your Web searches by using operators (2007-12-20)
• Toyota Wants to Make Sure You're Never Too Old to Drive (2007-12-19)
• Who should have made the Pro Bowl? - FOXSports.com (2007-12-19)
• Microsoft co-founder looks to add to spectrum cache - MarketWatch (2007-12-22)
• South American Ants Eating Way Across California (2007-12-19)
• Judge Sides With Man Fired for Posting 'Dilbert' at Work (2007-12-19)
• Fantasy Real Estate Game Lets You Play Realtor (2007-12-19)
• Vladimir Putin Named Time's 'Person of the Year' (2007-12-19)
• Bush Signs Bill Boosting Auto Fuel-Efficiency Standards (2007-12-19)
• The 7 most annoying developments in software (2007-12-19)
• New Net neutrality proposal planned for January (2007-12-19)
• Is Apple in danger of becoming Microsoft? (2007-12-19)
• CNET's Top 10 games of 2007 (2007-12-19)

Unobvious Christmas Gifts...

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas this week! I just wanted to ask a quick question: Do you ever receive what I call "Unobvious Christmas Gifts?" What I mean by "Unobvious" is that you receive something that wasn't necessarily on your list, and if you told someone else what you got, they would say something like, "You got what for Christmas?" But, at the same time, it is an awesome gift from your perspective.

For example, this year I received a 32 oz. Nalgene water bottle. Now, some may already be thinking, "why would you ever want a water bottle for Christmas?" Let me explain: a few months ago, I put my previous 32 oz. Nalgene in the dishwasher. However, I made the mistake of putting it in the bottom section, which allowed the lid to drift down into the very bottom of the dishwasher, melting it into a funny shape, rendering the bottle useless. Luckily, we have a collection of 16oz water bottles at home, so I've been bringing 2 of those to work with me every day for the past few months. It worked, but it just wasn't convenient.

So, when I opened up the 32 oz. Nalgene on Christmas morning, I was stoked!

Did you get any "Unobvious Christmas Gifts" this year?

Music Review - Jon Foreman

I recently purchased Jon Foreman's Fall EP (there is expected to be an EP for each of the seasons: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, you get the idea). For those of you who may not have ever heard of Jon Foreman, he is the lead singer/song writer for Switchfoot. And if you haven't heard of Switchfoot or Jon Foreman, then shame on you :) The EP contains 6 songs, all accoustic, each with their own distinct sound.

I've only listened to it a few times through so far, but I would say that my two favorite tracks at this point are "The Cure for Pain" and "Equally Skilled." If you're a fan of Switchfoot, or of Coldplay, or a similar sounding band, it's definitely worth checking out!

I'll give it a 4.5 out of 5.

News Tewsday - 12/18/07

• GarageBand 4.1.1 Offers Custom Ringtones for iPhone (2007-12-14)
• Google develops Wikipedia rival (2007-12-14)
• Celebrating 60 years of transistors (2007-12-14)
• No download needed: OpenOffice beta available as Web app (2007-12-12)
• The most useful keyboard shortcuts you probably don't know about (2007-12-13)
• The waterless car wash (2007-12-13)
• Word-of-the-Year Ritual Pauses for Puzzlement - New York Times (2007-12-13)
• 'Danger: Avoid Death' Wins Annual Wacky Warning Contest (2007-12-12)
• Celebrating one of the best-selling PCs ever (2007-12-12)
• Get DivX Pro for free (2007-12-12)
• Humans Evolving 100 Times Faster Than Ever (2007-12-11)
• Honda unveils robots that 'talk' to each other, work in pairs - USA Today (2007-12-11)
• December MacUpdate Software Bundle Sale [11th App Added] (2007-12-11)
• Arkansas Boy, 5, Kills 445-Pound Black Bear (2007-12-11)
• Father Jonathan: An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins (2007-12-11)
• Top Sellers of the Year on iTunes Revealed (2007-12-11)
• Firefox 3.0 beta 2 due by year's end (2007-12-11)
• NBC hitches onto download service from Apple rival SanDisk (2007-12-11)
• Zune vs iPod: The Results Are In (2007-12-10)
• Microsoft Disses Windows to Sell More Windows (2007-12-10)
• Fan Falls to His Death During Football Game (2007-12-10)

Questions? Comments?

Tech Blog Up and Running

For anyone who's interested, I have also started a blog that focuses more on my technical thoughts. There's a link on the right side of this page... or you can get to it directly from here.

This Week's News...

By popular request, I will start listing the headlines I've shared in the News of Interest... section (hopefully weekly) so if anyone would like to comment on them, they can!

So, without further ado, here are this week's headlines:

1. Negotiations Break Down Between Striking Writers, Producers (2007-12-08)
2. CompUSA closes shop (2007-12-08)
3. Scientists Report Success in Treatment With 'Reprogrammed Stem Cells' (2007-12-07)
4. Blogger presses Gates for IE8 answers (2007-12-06)
5. IBM says chip 'breakthrough' will shrink supercomputers (2007-12-06)
6. Judge Sentences Kiefer Sutherland to 48 Days in Jail (2007-12-06)
7. Former Evangelical Minister Has a New Message: Jesus Hearts Darwin (2007-12-05)
8. Verizon Wireless warms up to Google's Android (2007-12-04)
9. Gmail integrates AIM, adds colored labels (2007-12-04)
10. Teacher Accused of Using High School as Personal Meth Lab (2007-12-04)
11. High-quality unboxing photos of Amazon's Kindle eBook reader (2007-12-04)
12. Microsoft to Try Nagging Housewife Approach to Pirated Software (2007-12-04)
13. Italian Court Orders Cartoon Characters to Witness Stand (2007-12-04)
14. Oh, THAT big square box! (2007-12-04)
15. Behind the Activision-Blizzard union (2007-12-03)
16. Opening act for Gibson's self-tuning guitar (2007-12-04)
17. Rare Mummified Dinosaur Unearthed: Contains Skin, and Maybe Organs, Muscle (2007-12-03)
18. Futurama Returns! (2007-11-30)
19. Blizzard and Activision Announce $18.8bn Merger (2007-12-02)
20. The First 100 Dot Coms Ever Registered (2007-12-03)
21. How to Block Facebook's Privacy Compromising Beacon Feature (2007-12-02)
22. Man Believed to Have Drowned Shows Up 5 Years Later (2007-12-03)

Thoughts? Comments?

Catch Phrase!

I'm sure all of you have played Catch Phrase before, but in case you haven't, it's kinda like charades, but you can talk. Basically, you look at the word/phrase given to you, and you can say anything you want to describe it, besides the word(s) itself. If you've played Taboo before, it's exactly that, but there are no restrictions on the words you can say. In any case, I look at as Taboo, but MUCH, MUCH easier.

This weekend, we had a Christmas Party for my Dad's side of the family (as we do every year), and it seems as though a new tradition has been added to the usual evening: Eat dinner -- which resembles a Thanksgiving meal, Eat more cookies than you can handle (there are seriously at least 10 different kinds of cookie), and now, play Catch Phrase until the Guy team (we played Guys vs. Girls of course) is up by at least one game.

However, this year, the guy team just dominated. Maybe it's the connection between all of the siblings (my dad and his brothers) for anything older generation, and then me, my brother and my cousin + friends for the younger generation stuff. Even though I was missing my brother this year -- which is the best teammate to have -- we managed to pull out the win.

I hope you all are enjoying your Christmas Season, and being blessed by time spent with friends and family as I have.