Free Candy For Everyone

If you’re a wanderer on the internet, you’re probably aware of the crazy LOL Cat phenomenon. I first stumbled upon this bizarre … artform? … last year when someone posted some of these images on a forum I frequented.

The first time I saw these, they cracked me up. One or two of them, ok, that’s cute. But the sheer number of them, it just got me going. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one because this has spread. There are whole websites devoted to this. I headed over to lolcats2 and found this one, which is awesome. At least I think so.

This is one of the few occasions where I’m going to let atrocious grammar and spelling slide. It’s done on purpose! It’s satire or something, that’s allowable.

A little while back, a friend pointed out xkcd, a webcomic that’s quite clever. Well, he jumped into the party with this comic:

The big site for this stuff is probably I Can Has Cheezburger. I can’t explain this stuff, I just share it.

Then, this week one of my co-workers sends me a link to LOLCODE. It’s a programming language in the style of the lovely LOL Cats grammar. This is just insane. Sometimes the internet is a wonderful place. Cats are cute, m-kay?

Yup. It’s been over 3 weeks now and I haven’t played. I still could get reeled back in, but there are so many other games to play! I have almost two years of catching up to do.

Any suggestions? What’s something (not another MMO please!) that’s come out in the last 2 years that you consider a must play? Console RPGs are highly enjoyed, so if you have a fav one of those, let me know. I definitely intend to go back and finish Final Fantasy XII as soon as I wrap up Phantasy Star Universe.

I love to sing, as anyone who works with me can aver. I tend to sing while working, whether I mean to or not. And maybe a bit louder than I intend to. So when a co-worker found a cool karaoke website, he sent a link along to me.

SingShot lets anyone with a microphone and an internet connection record songs on their site. Then you can mark them public and anyone can listen, comment, give feedback. I recorded a song today. Not a great job, I messed up a bit, my microphone had the gain up a bit too high. But I’m not shy, here you go, give it a listen.

You may have read about the massive tornado the pummeled Kansas early this month and completely destroyed the town of Greensburg. If not, here’s some info about it. This disaster has lingered a bit fresher in my mind because Greensburg is the home town of one of the woman I work with.

Just after the storm, she sent out some pictures to show us what it was like before the devastation. Today, she followed those up with images of what it looks like now. I had to share some of them with a wider audience. These are frightening images of how terrifying weather can be.

The high school before:

And after:

Drugstore before:

Drugstore after:

Firestation after:

Devastation:

Even more:

Just about the whole town has been destroyed. If you want to help out and send some money, here’s what my friend Amy Beth says:

It’s been really comforting just to have everyones warm wishes and support, everytime I started to feel down, it has cheered me up and helped me spread a few smiles around to my friends and family. Donations are great, too, and after being home, I found out the best thing to do is to make checks out to “c/o City of Greensburg” with “rebuilding fund” in the memo line, and they can be sent to:

Greensburg State Bank
P.O. Box 787
Greensburg, Kansas 67054.

Technically, there’s not a bank there anymore, or a post office to deliver it, but everyone is getting their mail sent to the next town (40 miles away). There’s a good policy in practice to make sure that the money that goes to the rebuilding pool is divided in a fair way to all the necessary buildings and businesses, (school, hospital, grocery store, etc.). That will be the most help.

I can’t imagine seeing everything I grew up with in a pile of rubble. But that’s what these folks are going through. If you can help, definitely do what you can.

UPDATE: Satellite images of before and after can be seen here

Back in January, I started running. I’d been going to the gym, but decided to switch things up by adding a once-a-week run to the mix. Well, that wasn’t the only reason. Another part of my decision was that I really wanted to use the Nike+ system. I’m not sure where I first heard about the system, possibly on Binary Bonsai.

It’s a pretty simple system. If you have a iPod Nano, you can spend a mere $30 to get a little foot sensor and a receiver to plug in to the iPod. It tracks your steps and can tell you how far and how fast you’ve gone. And it gives you awesome graphs and a great community site to top it off. I figured $30 was a minor investment, and I picked one of these things up in March.

Up to that point, I’d been loosely following the Nike 5k Training Schedule. It asked you to run 3-4 times per week, however, and I was only putting in about 2. But then I got the Nike+ system. And it sat on my coffee table. But then my brother got the Nike+ system and started running and competition was born. I set the thing up and I was running. And running way more frequently and consistently than I had before we both got the toy. I mean awesome training device!

You see, Nike+ let’s you set up challenges. You can challenge any other Nike+ user to one of a few sorts of challenges. My brother and I are in a challenge to be the first to 100. I’m winning for the moment. But we’re neck and neck. Here’s the screen:

I’m Kaeta, my brother is teich. There’s even a little set up for talking trash to each other. We’re not exactly engaged in a brilliant back and forth here, but I’ll show you our last few comments anyways:

The best part of the whole thing is that we’re motivated. I’m not really good at the running yet. I don’t feel quite up to running with another person. And my brother lives too far away to be a good daily running partner anyways. This way, we get to help motivate each other without having to meet in person. Yay for the interwebs!

And some of the other information available - you can check out stats on all your past runs and compare them. I could do with a bit more info, like a way to overlay arbitrary runs over each other to see how your speed matches up, or see absolute speed at any point in the run. But maybe we’ll get more features soon. That’d be awesome. I leave you with my most recent runs:

And now to get some sleep! Gotta wake up and run tomorrow. Training for 10K now.