Fellow blogger Lynn is going through some trouble with the state Child Support Enforcement Agency, which still thinks her husband is still alive. I really hope it gets resolved to her satisfaction (and that she can convince the government that her DH is really dead and gone…good luck), but hey, it could be worse…

Since September 11, 2001, our government has been stepping up its efforts to try to fight terrorism. While it’s worth fighting, it must be done in a way that protects individual rights to privacy. Unfortunately, if the U.S. government has its way…well…let’s just say you wanted to order a pizza…

(Thanks to kimo55 and Ryan Ozawa from HawaiiThreads.com for the link.)

Benedict XVI. Benedict the sixteenth. After a quarter century of saying “Pope John Paul the second,” I’m trying to get used to saying “Pope Benedict the sixteenth” and it keeps sticking on my tongue; I keep getting stuck between the K, X, and T sounds. The fact that I’m prone to stuttering makes it harder. Sigh…those darn German speakers have to choose names that are so hard to pronounce, huh?

Well, the would should be thankful that he didn’t choose to be called George Ringo I, though I think he wouldn’t have been a big Beatles fan anyway.
(more…)

OK, I admit it. I love Wikipedia. I’ve got an account there and I enjoy my role as a volunteer editor. I guess it just appeals to two aspects of my personality…my insistence on perfect accuracy and truth (at least the way I see it), and my tendency to nitpick. I see a typo…boom…gone.

Over 500,000 articles are in Wikipedia on every conceivable topic. Since it was started in 2001 by James Wales, it has become nothing short of a phenomenon, a social experiment in creating a central repository of the world’s knowledge, that has spawned several sister projects and a non-profit foundation.

Such success could not have gone unnoticed by Bill Gates.
(more…)

Not that I really think there’s anything special about 96734, but having lived in Kailua virtually all my life, I can’t help but feel attached to it. Often a ZIP code is symbolic of the community to which it’s attached…thanks to a certain TV show, everyone knows the ZIP code of Beverly Hills, California. Which is why the Postal Service’s attempt to change ZIP codes on Oahu raised a few eyebrows.
(more…)

Ran across this link while surfing the Web, called Geoff’s Gender Guesser. It’s run by a student at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Among other things, it analyzes your first and last name and gives you an “alter ego” which is roughly similar based on Google popularity statistics. Tried it with mine and it came out as Kevin Crush. So if I ever have to use a pseudonym, you know where to look.

Man, what a day…you’d think it was a full moon, the way people were calling in today at work. The phone was ringing off the hook. I fielded about 17 calls in the first two hours of the morning…some days I’m lucky to get even half that for the whole day. Then in the late morning I had to go to a team meeting for about two hours, and came back to find seven voicemails in the my mailbox…eek!
(more…)

On the front page of the Advertiser this morning was this story about how deposit returns from Hawaii’s new bottle bill surged after languishing for the first two months.

And they’re surprised? I mean, the way people in Hawaii hoard their aluminum cans, I was thinking that they had to collect enough cans to make it worthwhile to redeem. Only nuts like me redeem cans and bottles and just get $1.00 back. Fifteen dollars or so…that’s another story. So, it’s working. Let’s give it a chance, I say.

Alchera Project, Project 32, Option 6.

…And Glenda the good witch said to Dorothy, who was dressed all in blue and wearing her ruby slippers, “Now click your heels three times, and say to yourself, ‘There’s no place like home…'”

And speaking of living wills…I know I should let Terri Schiavo rest in peace, but this is a Florida reporter’s idea of what he wants in his living will. I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got now, thanks.

(Thanks to Linkmeister for the link.)