Death Clock

Originally published 7/31/07

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From the website:

Welcome to the Death Clock(TM), the Internet's friendly reminder that life is slipping away... second by second. Like the hourglass of the Net, the Death Clock will remind you just how short life is.



Darn, I won't make it to the New Year's party.

http://www.deathclock.com/

They say time flies when you're havin' fun.

It goes pretty fast when you're just goofin' off, too.

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I was looking at a post I had linked to and saw this and decided to take the test again. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I'm gonna live a little longer than when I first took the test.

It's great what the loss of a few lbs. will do as well as a change of attitude, huh?

Topical Typing Trivia

Today is my h.s. typing/business teacher's birthday and in honor of her, here's this bit of trivia.


From The Old Farmer's Almanac:

What is the fastest speed on record (words per minute) for typing text?

There are three different words per minute (wpm) records -- for the manual typewriter, the electric typewriter, and the personal computer keyboard. On a manual typewriter, the world record is 176 wpm, and on an electric typewriter it is 216. In an official test in 1991, Gregory Arakelian of Virginia set the personal computer record with 158 wpm.

Sure beats my puny 54 WPM.

Baby Please Don't Go - Them

I was just listening to Powerage, an online radio station in Paris that plays nothing else but AC/DC and this song came on. I had forgotten AC/DC covered it, but I remembered other groups and musicians who had. (more information after the video)


From Wikipedia: "Baby, Please Don't Go" is a classic blues song which has been called "one of the most played, arranged, and rearranged pieces in blues history". It has become a blues and rock standard and has been recorded by a variety of artists.

After reading the Wiki article, I discovered that this version by Them was on the "B" side of a single they had released in 1964.  The "A" side tune?  Gloria, one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. (thanks to the first garage band I was ever around) From the Wiki entry for the song: Humourist Dave Barry joked that "You can throw a guitar off a cliff, and as it bounces off rocks on the way down, it will, all by itself, play Gloria."

The Keyword is "Generally"

Because the Lord, my family and friends know I'm sometimes NOT good natured.  My good nature goes out the window sometimes with spammers, trolls and partisan hacks from either side.

You Are Generally Good-Natured

Like everyone else, you have your ups and downs in life. You try to keep going and remain positive though! You know how easy it is to see the downside of any bad news. You do what you can to lift your spirits when times are tough. You're not just a good-natured person - you're a proactive one. You solve your problems whenever you can. Even in the worst of times, there's something you can do to make things better and less stressful... and you find it. You aren't overly optimistic or pessimistic. You think it's best to take a wait and see approach to most things.   Whenever there's a crisis, your friends and family appreciate your levelheadedness and realism. You keep your cool.

How Optimistic Are You?

Devils Tower

Earlier I had written about Bing and their fantastic, changing daily page (see post just under this one) and was pleased to see Devils Tower as today's theme.

If you're a movie fan, you'll immediately recognize it as the geological feature which is prominently featured throughout Close Encounters of the Third Kind, one of my favorite flicks.

Here's a montage of most of the scenes from the movie with Devils Tower in them...or recreations of same, painted in water color, modeled in dirt and chicken wire, even sculpted in mashed potatoes!



There's not that many places in the world I want to see before I die, but Devils Tower is on my bucket list. I'd love to include it in a tour of that part of the country, also visiting Mount Rushmore, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (Custer's Last Stand)and Yellowstone National Park.

Bing Things

I've recently started using Bing more often, not especially for search (because Google pretty much does it the best) but because I enjoy their daily interactive and informative page, and also because they give points for visiting and for clicking on links. Granted, it looks like it would take a LOT of points to get anything worthwhile, but I imagine that after a year of using it the points would add up to some substantial total.

My problem is this: often, when I visit the page, I see I'm not signed in. The good thing is all I have to do is click on the "Microsoft account" and I'm signed in. (I certainly don't want to connect my Facebook account to anything!)

What I don't understand is how I'm not signed in, but it knows my points total. Strange. What's really odd is this next message after signing in:

You HAVE to click "Continue" to continue because if you don't, you're sent to a blank white page.  Yeah, that's great;  if I wanted a blank white page, I could just go to Google and put in "blank white page". -snicker-  I know enough HTML to where I could make my own!

Another reason I started using Bing is that Google is doing away with the iGoogle home page I've used for years.  I really liked it; I had various modules on it for news and local weather and sports headlines along with a Gmail preview.  I don't understand what's up with Google lately;  they did away with file storage a couple of years ago which was annoying but understandable, but their explanation for ending Google Reader didn't make much sense. 

The 'net is great, but it's also frustrating as hell.  It could also be described as fleeting, because as soon as you get used to something, get it the way you like it, it changes or disappears.