Update

Another article on Google's wishes for their name not to be turned into an all-purpose verb was published in The Morning Report this morning. Read "Googling for Trouble" here.

"Just google it"

Google has launched an effort to keep people from using their name as an all-purpose verb.

Yea, I know, really. Anyways, you can read more about the corporate mayhem here. And remember you can't say that you "googled it" if you were searching on Yahoo. It is interesting to think about the evolution of a verb from a noun. I think I'll go and ponder for a while.

iPod Etiquette

The Morning News has just run an article on mp3 etiquette. As much as I love my iPod, I must agree with most of the statements they make about when ear buds are appropriate. I had an urge to send this to a professor who always pretends to be talking to you when he walks by if you are wearing headphones. He mouths words just to make you take the headphones off an annoy you. Since I know how to lip read I usually just answer his mouthed questions and he gets irritated and walks away. Luckily, I resisted the urge an instead got to bad mouth him on the Internet. Oh, the wonders of the modern world.

Doping

If you have ever considered using performance enhancing drugs, I promise this will scare you out of it. Outside magazine did an article by an amateur cyclist who tried a normal athlete's drug regimen to see what the effects would be. Its scary stuff and frankly I find the effects disturbing. Nonetheless, read the article here to find out what happens when $1,000 drugs take over your body.

Fox 2

The new version 2 of Mozilla Firefox was released yesterday. New features include lost entry recovery. If you accidentally close a window or tab in the middle of typing an e-mail or blog entry you can set Firefox to automatically recover it. Also, the new version has individual close buttons on each tab. So you don't accidentally close the wrong one. Plenty of new add-ons too. I highly encourage everyone to switch over to Fox. Its a better system than Internet Explorer and I like that fact that I am not falling victim to the Microsoft monopoly. Plus, its completely free. You can download Fox 2 here. Also, Mozilla also offers Thunderbird, which is free e-mail software. I have used it but have heard good things.

Post from yesterday that I forgot to publish

Yesterday's word of the day was "dork." Here are some of the ways in which it was used throughout the day, most of them directed towards me.

• Me to a friend coming to sit at our lunch table: "Help me, I'm surrounded by dorks." Her reply: "Newsflash, hon, you are a dork."
• Me asking a friend an innocent question: "J, what kind of sandwich do you have for lunch today." His reply: "You are such a dork." (He had a cheese sandwich, by the way.)
• And later, me to J after finding out who he was dating: "Oh, you're such a dork couple."

Also, this one isn't a dork quote, but it is amazing nonetheless. I was talking with two friends about weird family habits. C.C. says in her family they call rotisserie chickens magic chickens. I ask if that was something her parents made up when she was little to explain to her how the chicken was already cooked when they brought it home. And the other friend says, "Like sex?" I think this was in reference to explanations your parents make up when you are little, but I was laughing so hard that I didn't get the chance to ask. I know, my friends are pretty awesome. Thanks, guys.

Math Class Quote

We were talking about inverse sine, cosine, and tangent and how their domain is set for the simplest possible answers in math class today. After wondering why mathematicians chose the easiest way to solve the trigonometric inverses, the kid in front of me raises his hand and says:

Real men don't use one-to-one functions.

Priceless, absolutely priceless.

Costumes

If I had a dog, he would probably be dressed up like this for Halloween.

Gallaudet Protest

Anyone who has been reading the papers closely should know that there is currently a protest happening at Gallaudet University about the appointment of Dr. Jane Fernandez as the new university president. Gallaudet is the only Deaf liberal arts college in the country. I am studying ASL in school so I find the controversy very interesting. I believe that Deaf people should be proud of their Deafness and the that the hearing community needs to make efforts to cooperate with the Deaf community. I am not a fan of the new choice for President, who does not sign well. She has been doing interviews on the radio (through an interpreter) without providing transcripts for the students at her school. Here are some links for those of you her want to learn more.

• The Georgetown Voice
• The New York Times
• Gally FSSA

In other news in the Deaf community, a couple on Martha's Vineyard is doing one of the first ever plays to be signed and spoken simultaneously by the same actors. It is about the Deaf community living on Martha's Vineyard in the 1890's and is called "This Island Alone." The Vineyard Gazette did a very interesting article about the production which goes up this weekend. I am hoping that they will make a VHS/DVD of the show for the public to order. NPR also did a segment on the production, which is available to listen to on their web site. Unfortunately they do not seem to have posted a transcript as well, but there are some accompanying articles on issues in the Deaf community that could be interesting.

Fonts

A couple days ago I saw this article posted on kottke.org. It lists the 7 most overused and worst fonts typically found in word processing programs. Looking to spice up your documents a bit? You can buy fonts at T.26 Digital Type Foundry. These fonts are not mainstream, and are custom designed for sale by graphic artists. They're a bit pricey but worth looking at and helpful for generating ideas.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

No, I'm not talking about the band. To check my e-mail I use a program called Eudora which was originally designed for Macs but is now also compatible with with my Dell desktop. I love Eudora because it checks all my different e-mail accounts at once and puts them all on one screen. I don't have to sign in to get my e-mail because I don't actually have to open an ISP to get to it. I can still check my individual accounts through Comcast and Yahoo when I am away from home. The way I keep it set up is so that Eudora is always open when I'm signed in on my computer and it dings when a new message comes in. This is incredibly convenient as I am no longer a compulsive e-mail checker; I just know when I have mail

Eudora is free software yet it is jam packed with features. Besides the address book and stationary, I haven't really figured out how to use very many of these yet (despite having the software for more than two years.) The other day I wrote an e-mail to a friend containing what my sister would call a "bad word." When I clicked the send button a window popped up telling me, "Your message is the kind of thing that might get your keyboard washed out with soap, if you get my drift. You might consider toning it down." Amazing, my computer actually has a sense of humor. Well, against my better judgement I took out the offending word and sent the e-mail. I know you can override this feature but I can of enjoy the program's cheeky humor.

I didn't really think anything of it until I got an e-mail the next day that had three red chili peppers next to it in the queue. These appeared in a category that Eudora calls the Mood Watch status. I opened the e-mail and sure enough there was an f-bomb that one of my friends had dropped into his narrative, just for emphasis. Although I was in NO way offended, it all seemed to make sense. Eudora screens the e-mails and if there is anything offensive it is indicated with red hot chili peppers. Now that's a laugh.

The Bloggercycle

One of my favorite blogs (besides this one of course) is the blog of MassBike, called the Bloggercycle. Unfortunately its writer has left MassBike, because he is moving to New York, and therefore will no longer be able to work for a Massachusetts organization. The good news is that he had decided to keep the blog and continue updating with interesting and hysterical bike related news. Being a cyclist myself this is a great relief because his is the best bike blog out there. Check it out in the 'links" list.

Something useful I actually learned in math class

In math we have recently began studying circular trig. This would be of no particular interest to me except that my teacher has decided that we should include a little bit of math history in the unit. Well, in the process of talking about how the Babylonians decided there should be 360 degrees in a circle we got slightly off topic and somehow got onto the topic of leap years. Now I thought I understood leap years: they are used to compensate for the fact that each year is a little more than 365 days. I was mistaken, though, in thinking we just added a day every four years. There is actually a complicated system of making sure that our calendar stays on track. I found this whole thing about math history and calendars quite fascinating, even the part on radians (if you don't know, don't ask.) If you like me, are enough of a geek to learn more you can click here.