This sort of thing is very upsetting, if you have any kind of heart it makes you speechless. I was in the area back in 1998, and stayed in Slidell Louisiana, which is a town on the banks on Lake Ponchratrain (sp?). It is also the town where my great-great-grandfather was born. Now it doesn't exist. I passed over the lake on I-10, which is a very long, very scary bridge, and now that doesn't exist.

When I moved to New York in 1997, the first thing I saw of the city were the tops of the World Trade Center. Now they don't exist.

We fool ourselves if we think that anything is invulnerable, impenetrable, immortal. Things change, the best we can do is adapt, move on, build on.

I happened to be looking at the best-seller book lists earlier today, and saw a word new to me (rare) - sudoku, in the titles of a couple of books creeping up from the bottom of the lists. I love the Japanese language, and it was odd to see a new Japanese word sneaking into the English lexicon in such a blatantly popular way as a best-selling book title. I of course got curious, and began looking it up. It turns out that it is a number placement game, that looks something like a crossword puzzle. It's great fun, deceptively simple, and unfortunately, quite addictive. What is more interesting though, is the story of how it became a global meme. The game was originally invented in 1979 in the US, but gained popularity in Japan in the 80s, and until recently where hand made. Several people claim credit for writing programs to generate workable puzzles, and now apparently, these are being printed in mainstream newspapers (I haven't bought a paper in nearly a year, so this is the first I have heard about it) as of this year. It will be interesting to see if it stays as popular as the crossword puzzle (which I utterly despise as far as puzzles go).

I just got an email invite to a horror screenplay contest. I presume I got the invite because I'm listed on inktip (which I found out about from a contact at the Phoenix Film Festival). I was excited at first, since quite a few high-profile production companies were signed on, but then doubt started stabbing at the back of my mind. There is a small fee to submit, not in and of itself unusual, but what's to stop some creative person from slapping together a website, trolling for eager, desperate victims and finding fistfuls of checks in the ol' post office box? Hmmm. I will probably submit, but I'll be checking out the sites of each of the bona-fide production companies for signs that such a contest actually exists.

I just came across BlogPulse which is a blogdex, but you can also graph the frequency of topics in blog posts (they call it trending). Essentially, you can track pop culture. I love the information age - I would never have thought something like this could be done even 5 years ago. I tested it with many different topics, and the one that seemed most popular was Harry Potter, topping out at a whopping 5 percent of all posts around the release of the sixth book. Talk about culture saturation! And apparently, HP is popular among inmates at Guantanomo (sp?) along with Agatha Christie (huh?). Somehow they seem a lot less threatening now...Hmmm, Stan Shunpike....

Okay, I apologize for talking once more about the weather, but this has been one freaky monsoon season. Two days ago we had a freak storm in the morning, nothing terribly bad, but it *never* rains in the morning in the summer in AZ. Then, yesterday afternoon there was a freak downpour. It wasn't just regular pouring, it was if the thundercloud simply descended from the sky and splattered on the ground. It decided to do this just after I got in my car to run an errand. I got about a half mile before my windshield instantly fogged and I ran into a curb. The water became about 6 inches deep in this time. I managed to pull into a gas station, mainly on memory of where it was because I could see essentially nothing. I got out of the car and in about 5 seconds (I am not kidding) was completely soaked through. I bought a hot chocolate (it was about 60 degrees when it should be 120 degrees outside) and loitered around the gas station store with several other freaked out motorists.

I was stranded there for about 45 minutes before the rain settled to an ordinary pour and I gained the confidence to venture out to the flooded streets. It was slow going with a lot of stalled out cars and police trying to take care of it, as well as water up to the wheel wells. Intersections were particularly bad, for some reason the water pools there - so very scary to get through before the light changes. One Kmart parking lot I past was really bad, people where wading through it waste deep, which wasn't a smart idea since the storm sewers were backed up. A couple of miles out there had been no rain at all and the streets were dry.

Apparently I can't trick AdSense into targeting bogus ads - I'm gonna try harder - kung-fu, kung-fu, kung-fu!

Google is the one site my non geek friends truly admire, unconditionally. It continues to amaze me. I've been signed up with google adwords for quite some time, and have decided to test out AdSense. The first ad that appeared when I pasted in the requisite code was a PSA - they do that if they don't know your site content yet. Ten seconds later, when I reloaded, it was a targeted ad. Ten seconds! Whatever voodoo they've got going on is pretty kung-fu if you ask me (I wrote that to see if I get ads targeted to kung-fu and voodoo). All hail the oracle.

It just rained here in Mesa for about 7 hours straight - just pouring. I inadvertantly drove through about two feet of water in one spot, and I wasn't even anywhere near a wash (dry riverbed for non AZ natives). The water started coming up over the hood of my car. All sorts of people had stalled out, getting water in their engines. Fortunately my car made it through okay, but it was very scary.

I just read in Wired (July 05) that the man who created the term weblog (which of course became blog, blogger, blogging, etc) is homeless. He panhandles but still updates his website. I don't know, that's just a little shocking...

I added a shop section, where my cafepress shops can be accessed. I also added what I call a Wikidex, which is intended to be a list of all of the Wiki articles I've written/edited, but I haven't gotten around to fleshing it out just yet.