A Christmas Meme

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
Hot chocolate, mostly. Egg nog on occasion.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Santa always wrapped. Unwrapping is half the fun!

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?

I like white lights - the colored lights give me a headache.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
Never.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
Now, I don't put up any, really. I stay with my family for days at Christmas, so it seems silly to decorate my house, when I won't be there.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Turkey and mashed potatoes, with gravy!

7. Favorite Christmas memory as a child?
My sister and I digging into our stockings on Christmas morning. My mom (um, I mean Santa) always had a stocking for each of us with candy and some small toys. We were allowed to open our stockings before my parents got up, but everything else had to wait.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I don't even remember. I'm guessing at school, I think in first or second grade. I do remember my mom making me pretend for a few years, for the sake of my younger sister.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
When I was a kid, we opened one gift on Christmas Eve, after we got home from Grandma's house. Now, as adults, we save them all for Christmas morning when my sister comes over from from her house (since I'm already staying at Mom's).

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
I don't have one right now. Once I start celebrating Christmas in my own home, I'll get one. I do have several of my childhood ornaments saved, including a giant clay-fired gingerbread man I made in first grade that weighs about 2 lbs.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
Now, I kinda love it. As a kid, we usually didn't get much. Now, I like it, until I have to slush around in it.

12. Can you ice skate?
You could call it that, though I'm better at falling down.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
No, but one thing I do remember is that once I was in college, and for several years after, my mom would always give me a box full of sundries - shampoo, underwear, toothpaste, etc. so that I wouldn't have to spend money on that kind of stuff for a while.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Remembering to be nice to people, even when they are forgetting.

15. What is your favorite holiday desert?
This german cookie my grandma used to make. We called them "radakuchen" - I don't know their real name, or what's in them. They're a hard, vanilla-flavored cookie, covered in powdered sugar. My uncle has the receipe now, and still makes them every time we have a family party.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Getting together with my mom's side of the family (her parents and brother and sister, and their families) on Christmas Eve. As sappy as it is, and as much as my cousins and I try to make our parents "forget", I love when we sing Christmas carols together. It's mostly hilarious, because we're all horrific singers, but we do it anyway.

17. What tops your tree?
My mom always had a traditional angel.

18. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
I like the melancoly, so I've always loved "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

19. Favorite Christmas Movie?
Full-length movie, Scrooged, hands down. Of the Holiday shorts, I like the Rankin-Bass specials, like Rudolph and Twas the Night Before Christmas.

20. What do you leave for Santa?
When I was a kid, my mom and sister and I used to bake sugar cookies using a press, so we could make little trees, wreaths, etc. We'd use food coloring on the dough. Santa always got some.

found!

A "Found" that I submitted over a year ago just made the "Find of the Day" on Found.com.

i had no idea...

that such a thing existed.

And they advertise on Gmail.

heh

My favorite spam subject line of all time:

"Jessica Alba Has Pokie Purple Nipples"

A good cause

My favorite blog, Tomato Nation, is participating in the DonorsChoose Blog Challenge, where bloggers challenge their readers to raise money to fund projects in low-income school districts.

The contest is supposed to last 31 days. The readers of Tomato Nation met their goal of $35,000 in less than 2 days (about $28,000 ahead of the next highest group), and are currently most of the way to their first bonus goal of $5000 (which leads to the blogger dancing the "Angela Dance" from "My So-Called Life" around 30 Rockerfeller Place in a giant tomato costume). Due to this bonus challenge, Claire Danes has already volunteered to donate $5000 additional if this group makes it to the $50,000 mark.

So, if you've got $10 or $50 laying around that you'd like to donate to needy school kids (and WHO DOESN'T?), head on over to the Challenge.

ETA: Those crazy people have already hit the $40,000, and $50,000 marks so they're on to the next challenge and the $75,000 mark.

If you do donate, let me know in the comments, so I can give you a big hug when I see you.

lolcat!

At last, my photo and caption of my kitty, Lou, made it onto the voting page of the I Can Has Cheezburger website.

If you aren't familiar with it, you are missing out.

If you are familiar, please vote for Lou! The voting page doesn't allow you to create direct links to pictures, but currently he's on page 1, at the bottom.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/the-cheezburger-factory/



ETA: Yay, front page status! I can writes kitteh dialogue.

where man has never gone before

On the internet with time to kill? Check out Galaxy Zoo.

Long-range, high-powered telescopes are taking hundreds of images a day of distant galaxies and other objects, many, many more than can be analyzed by the staff available. History has shown that the human eye is much better at classifying these objects than computers (which throws out anomalies, which are the most interesting of all).

This site allows regular joes to view and classify images from the hundreds of thousands currently being cataloged. You go through a tutorial and then take a test. Once you pass the test, you can begin classifying. Your classifications are compared with others to create a consensus. You can see pictures from the universe that almost no one has ever seen.

Seriously, it is addictive. Discovered via Bad Astronomy.

ETA: Why am I addicted? 'Cause you get to see stuff like this! Look at the tail! Galaxies are MERGING! It's Science in action!


I'm just not sure what's happening here...

vanity searching

I was talking with some friends this weekend, and we were talking about our internet identites. Megan Pedersen mentioned being asked by the other Megan Pedersen to stop using the name "Megan Pedersen," since the other Megan Pedersen was going to be famous and needed her name.

It reminded me that I wasn't sure if I was the only one of me on the internet. A quick search this morning, and I discovered that yes, in fact, no one else on the internet is using my name. I'm unique!

I also learned that things you wrote on the internet 12 years ago could still be out there. Like the very first website I ever created. Aw, so cute.

6 weird things

Hixx tagged me a while ago on this meme that's going around, so I supposed I should get to it.

6 Weird Things About Me

1. Squishy, juicy food makes me sick. Seriously, I never eat oranges, tomatoes, strawberries, and other foods that squish and burst in your mouth. Describing the sensation right now is making me a little queasy. I love the smell and flavor of most fruits, but the actually texture completely grosses me out.

2. I absolutely love music, but have no musical ability. I'm not quite tone deaf, but I'm close. It makes me crazy, because I'd love to be able to sing or play an instrument, but, well, my genes just didn't go that way.

3. On a similar note, I love the physical sciences, but my math-and-science abilities fall short. When it comes to physical sciences like geology, astronomy, marine biology, where I can be involved with my hands or observe, I'm fascinated, but when you start mixing in math, like physics, I just don't get it. I probably would have studied science if it wasn't for the math.

4. Most of the music I listen to is about 20+ years old. I'm convinced that I should have been born in about 1950. I should have been a teenager in the 1960s. I'm so drawn to that era of American history.

5. Babies and little kids love me. For real. I'm like the Pied Piper. Little kids I've never met come up to me in parks and ask me to play with them. Bawling babies come into my arms and then stop crying. I think kids can recognize adults who are honest and who don't look down on them (no short jokes!). I treat kids like short adults, not like a nuisance or a dog.

6. I prefer email to using the telephone. I hate talking on the phone if I can avoid it. Email is much more convienent, and easier to keep track of. A big part is also that I don't really remember things when I hear them. I'm a visual person, and so I remember things that I see or read much more than I remember things I hear.

a *shudder* reverse meme

I had some sort of annoying information come at me today at work, and so I'm feeling a little down and a little weird. Inspired by Ms. Sparks, who was in turn stealing it from someone else, here are some questions for you... Comment if you feel like it.

Thirteen Quizzical Questions for You, The Reader

1. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it. (aside from the obvious)
2. Am I loveable?
3. How long have you known me?
4. When and how did you first find my blog?
5. What was your first impression?
6. Do you still think that way about me now?
7. What makes me happy?
8. What makes me sad?
9. What song (if any) reminds you of me?
10. If you could give me anything what would it be?
12. Do you consider me a friend?
13. How often do you visit my blog?
14. Describe me in one word.

vamping it up

this new look is semi-temporary. i need to play with the new blogger tools and figure out how to customize this thing a big, especially the column width, as this narrow little column is driving me a little buggy. As is this pink. but for now, enjoy the new tickers, the labels, and the blogger-provided comments. sorry, all your old, insightful comments are now gone.

um, i'm gonna go do some work now...

my new favorite webcomic

It's Electric!

I have Discovery Channel News in my RSS feed (yes, I'm a dork), and this headline just popped up in the feed while I was looking at my inbox - "Study: Dust Storms Are Electric."

While reading through my inbox, every time I looked up and read the headline, my brain would tack on "boogie-woogie-oogie."

Hey!

I am fully in favor of teenage girls with good editing skills, who like the Pixies.

Watching this makes me jealous. I have to wonder if the simple tools that are available to teenagers now, like digital video cameras and editing software, had been available to me when I was a teenager, or in college for that matter, I might have been better able to actually get into the editing field like I wanted to.

this is why you always read your junk mail

I just found the following in my Junk Mail folder. This made my day.

I don't THINK it's real, but someone went to a huge amount of trouble to recreate Haliburton's website, and then to create the item and take the pictures.

Fake site: http://www.halliburtoncontracts.com
Halliburton site: http://www.halliburton.com

FROM: Halliburton Emergency Products Development Unit
SUBJECT: HALLIBURTON SOLVES GLOBAL WARMING

SurvivaBalls save managers from abrupt climate change

An advanced new technology will keep corporate managers safe even when climate change makes life as we know it impossible.

"The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way," said Fred Wolf, a Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida. "This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change," he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.

Most scientists believe global warming is certain to cause an accelerating onslaught of hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, etc. and that a world-destroying disaster is increasingly possible. For example, Arctic melt has slowed the Gulf Stream by 30% in just the last decade; if the Gulf Stream stops, Europe will suddenly become just as cold as Alaska. Global heat and flooding events are also increasingly possible.

In order to head off such catastrophic scenarios, scientists agree we must reduce our carbon emissions by 70% within the next few years. Doing that would seriously undermine corporate profits, however, and so a more forward-thinking solution is needed.

At today's conference, Wolf and a colleague demonstrated three SurvivaBall mockups, and described how the units will sustainably protect managers from natural or cultural disturbances of any intensity or duration. The devices - looking like huge inflatable orbs - will include sophisticated communications systems, nutrient
gathering capacities, onboard medical facilities, and a daunting defense infrastructure to ensure that the corporate mission will not go unfulfilled even when most human life is rendered impossible by catastrophes or the consequent epidemics and armed conflicts.

"It's essentially a gated community for one," said Wolf.

Dr. Northrop Goody, the head of Halliburton's Emergency Products Development Unit, showed diagrams and videos describing the SurvivaBall's many features. "Much as amoebas link up into slime molds when threatened, SurvivaBalls also fulfill a community function. After all, people need people," noted Goody as he showed an
artist's rendition of numerous SurvivaBalls linking up to form a managerial aggregate with functional differentiation, metaphorically dancing through the streets of Houston, Texas.

The conference attendees peppered the duo with questions. One asked how the device would fare against terrorism, another whether the array of embedded technologies might make the unit too cumbersome; a third brought up the issue of the unit's cost feasibility. Wolf and Goody assured the audience that these problems and others were being addressed.

"The SurvivaBall builds on Halliburton's reputation as a disaster and conflict industry innovator," said Wolf. "Just as the Black Plague led to the Renaissance and the Great Deluge gave Noah a monopoly of the animals, so tomorrow's catastrophes could well lead to good - and industry must be ready to seize that good."

Goody also noted that Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society was set to employ the SurvivaBall as part of its Corporate Sustenance (R) program. Another of Cousteau's CSR programs involves accepting a generous sponsorship from the Dow Chemical Corporation, whose general shareholder meeting is May 11.

Please visit http://www.halliburtoncontracts.com/EPDU/ for photos,
video, and text of today's presentation.