"I've seen everything."

It's no secret that I spend a lot of time surfing the intarwebs, usually trying to find something suitable to put on my link site. Even though there are only three links a week, I go through a lot of bandwidth. The things I've seen...

I'll be talking to friends about some off-handed subject when I tell them of a related site I've seen. Or I'll be IMing someone and am reminded of a site I've seen. People are shocked, amazed, confused, terrified. And sometimes frustrated (one co-worker made it his life's goal to find something on the internet I hadn't seen yet). So, when I invariably get the number one question asked of me, "Where do you find this stuff?" I reply, "Why, on the internet, of course!"

This week, Penny Arcade talked about a Playstation 3 game, linking to its Flash predecessor. When I read their post, something about the game sounded familiar. I checked my site archive; it was linked on March 24, 2006.

I've seen things that are strange, weird, funny, scary, inexplicable, and downright terrifying. I've seen everything. Pretty much, anyway.

Debbie Does Intertubes

A friend and I were talking about the early days of surfing the intarwebs, back in 1994 when it first became the thing to do. Some web sites didn't even have DNS names; they were just raw IP addresses. So, when you were telling someone about a site, you either gave the IP, or the friendly name if there was one. A group of us geeks were standing around talking about sites (or, in those days, "home pages") when one of our more brilliant co-workers asked, "Why does everyone keep saying, 'Debbie, Debbie, Debbie'? Who is Debbie?"

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Do you know how hard it is for someone that's obsessive-compulsive to get a multi-monitor setup with two height-, tilt- and swivel-adjustable LCD flat panels positioned precisely so that they match up perfectly?

And you thought you had problems.

Glowing Recommendation

Overheard in the hallway at work:

"Well, I hope I've convinced you that you don't need to upgrade to Office 2007."

This is a lot funnier to those that know where I work. Also if you read bash.org.

Word to your Mother

If Microsoft Word (and, by extension, all of their products) weren't built for mothertrucking idiots, then I could actually get some motherfrelling work done and not have to spend motherfracking hours trying to get the motherfrigging list numbering to work the way it should instead of the motherhumping way Word thinks I must want it to.

If I could get all the hours back I've wasted re-creating documents from scratch, laboriously copying text from the "bad" document into an empty "good" document, using Notepad to strip out all the text formatting, I could take three months of paid vacation.

I'm normally pretty calm about most things, but Word makes me want to throw limited edition Star Wars collector action figures through my monitor.

<Clippy pops up on the screen, saying, "It appears you're upset. Do you want to do some deep breathing exercises?">

Chatting Destroyed My Typing Skills

I spend a lot of time online, and much of that includes chatting. IRC. IM. And my constant presence in the MMO I play. These interactive typing environments require quick responses to stay with a conversation.

I type really fast. In fact, online chatting has only increased my typing speed. It has also murderized my ability to use the shift and space keys correctly.

As a writer/editor, I tend to follow writing rules like using punctuation and capitalizing words correctly. Unfortunately, as I try to quickly spurt out text, I find the words get ahead of shifting and spacing. I get words that have two caps at the beginning, or the first letter of a new word at the end of the previous word.

Also, improper shifting combined with the Enter key can cause problems. In some chat clients, it goes to the next line in the text entry field instead of sending the text. In my MMO game, it is a special bind to send to my group channel, not the one I'm talking in.

My backspace key is the most-used key on my keyboard, which just confirms the old aphorism, "Haste makes waste." So if you're chatting with me, I'm not that slow, really. I'm just hitting Backspace like a jackhammer.

One Ringtone to Rule Them All

I have the geekiest ringtone ever. I was reminded of this when I forgot to put my phone on vibrate at work, and it went off in a crowd of geeks. All of whom identified it and laughed in a "that's geeky-cool" kind of way.

Why did I get the ringtone I have? Because of this hilarious video.

I've never paid for a ringtone, but I did do a quick web search and downloaded the mp3. I guess I kind of did pay for the ringtone, since I emailed it to my phone. A couple of my friends were in on the whole thing and have it on their phones too. You should see us all scramble when we're together and one of our phones ring. Confusion!

You can get it here.

Motivations

Company perq: Free drinks at work, including coffee, tea, soft drinks and juice (but, curiously, not bottled water).
Positive result: Liquid intake increased.
Negative result: Kidneys working overtime, bladder stress, path worn between desk and bathroom.
Unintended side effect: Understanding aggressive driving. Forgetting to stop by the bathroom before the end of the day can really motivate you to get home as soon as possible.

Leftovers

Now that the Super Bowl is over, what are grocery stores going to do with all those football-shaped containers of snack food? I doubt they'll keep for a year...