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Well, I'm back from North Carolina. My trip featured, among other things:

• Nearly three full days with someone who's made my top-five list of "most annoying, clueless people in the world." The guy's a piece of work, and I could go on for hours. But I shall not.
• Five hours or so spent in the company of one of today's top twenty golf course designers. He may be ranked in the top ten, I can't say. An affable, intelligent man who's been in the biz a loooong time.
• A visit to the Payne Stewart statue behind Pinehurst #2's 18th green. And lunch in the Donald Ross Grill.
• Three rounds of golf, averaging about an 80 or so. Not bad with the layoff, the new clubs, etc. I made a birdie on each course.
• Relatively pain-free flights totalling about 1:45 in each direction. Though landing in Erie is always, uhhh, "eventful"…

Good trip, and fairly inexpensive. One I'm looking to do again sometime. Now back to work.

Question: What's the most interesting place you've been this week?

My Answer: The 18th green at Pinehurst #2. Why? Oh, just some fond memories…

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: What's the most beautiful piece of equipment you own?

My Answer: I've intentionally left the question vague… but I chose the word "beautiful" over "sexy" for a reason. I've recently got a set of Titleist 680s, and they're gorgeous.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Does your car stereo (or other story) have the RDS?

My Answer: The RDS is the thing that tells you the song name, artist, and radio station. Car radios without RDS always display "101.3." It's been out for awhile and I can't imagine it's terribly costly. My radio supports it, but only about half of the popular radio stations in Erie, PA broadcast RDS data.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Do you still talk to your exes?

My Answer: No. None of 'em. I do talk to other people's exes, though… 😉

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Is Apple treating Mac users as second-class citizens with the push towards USB 2 over Firewire on new iPods?

My Answer: Yep. Apple, if you want to cater to PC people, just put both in the gosh darn box, mmmk? Firewire is faster.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I posted a story at The Sand Trap which discusses the distance professional golfers hit the ball these days. My conclusion is that distance is not everything, but that other factors, such as player conditioning, course conditioning, the lob wedge, and the spin players get from the rough are the main reasons scores get lower each year.

When looking at sport in the past 100 years, it strikes me that perhaps only tennis has undergone such a dramatic improvement due to equipment. Big-headed tennis rackets made out of graphite coposites replaced aluminum (which replaced wood) in the 1980s - just a few years before graphite and titanium stormed into the golf world. But even tennis falls short of golf's frenetic pace - the ball and the courts remain essentially unchanged.

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Question: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your interest in digital photography?

My Answer: Prior to a week or two ago, 3. Since then, 5. After March 25 or so, 6-7.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Are men, in your estimation, better at math, programming, and sciences in general than women? To what do you attribute your answer: pre-determined nature or nurture/society/etc.?

My Answer: I long ago read a study that said men were better with math and women with language and the arts. In my experience, this has held up - young males are more likely to build blocks or Legos and the females to color or finger paint. I'm not prepared to say that it's an "intrinsic aptitude" as Lawrence Summers recently said, but it seems to bear itself out. It's tough to imagine a 4-year-old feeling societal pressures to go for one thing over the other.

Comments that simply attack someone's opinion and/or fail to answer the question may be removed.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Perhaps I've just overlooked this, but is it possible to tie the profits from Google's AdSense in to Google's AdWords? In other words, so that the money you earn from one can pay for the other?

The money would never leave Google's hands, after all, and they'd be achieving profitability several times over - they make profit on both AdSense and AdWords, after all.

Kottke's going to be blogging full-time now, and he asked us to throw in some prizes. We've donated five copies of PulpFiction and Rock Star to the effort. Click on through for more information.

Good luck, Jason.

Drunkenblog follows up with a bunch of quotes from folks with a Mac software gig regarding those kids who pirated Tiger. Slashdot links and comments, as it always does.

It's shocking to read some of the viewpoints. Most seem to say something like "yeah, Apple has a right to sue, but should they sue so aggressively?" Many liken the situation to "making an example" of the kids. IANAL either, but it's my understanding that unless Apple protects their rights, those rights are weakened. In other words, if Apple were merely to ask for a $500 fine instead of whatever they're suing for (which, as it turns out, nobody really knows), then that would set a precedent for future rules-breakers: pay a $500 fine and off you go.

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Tonight I spent an hour redoing links on The Sand Trap because Google (and MSN, and Yahoo) seem to have a bug: they don't recognize the ".golf" extension.

The search results you do get (currently) on MSN and Yahoo are either from the forum (.php) or from category archives (i.e. "http://thesandtrap.com/archive/pga/") where the index file is pre-determined.

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I'm interested in taking photos, as you may have noticed, but one of the work-related purposes is to stitch together panoramas. In the past, I've manually stitched together panoramas in Photoshop. However, I'm looking for software that makes this a little bit easier.

If it can create QuickTime VR movies, all the better, but it's far from critical. Very few people seem to actually use QuickTime movies. A preliminary search on MacUpdate provides a few leads.

Question: What celebrity death most impacted your life?

My Answer: Today's question courtesy of Hunter S. Thompson, who shot himself Sunday night. I've been around 26 years, so I've not seen many high-profile assassinations in the US (i.e. Malcolm X, JFK, etc.), but that didn't stop me from becoming obsessed with one: JFK's murder. I wrote a 300-page discussion on JFK's murder, have seen the Costner movie upwards of 50 times, and would have published a book had there not already been 5,000 JFK books out there.

Of the "modern-day" celebrity deaths, I'm actually going to rank Arthur Ashe's near the top of my list. His death at the hands of AIDS changed my views on a lot of things. Dr. Seuss's death was also important as I wrote a junior paper on his work. We had to write a thesis paper on any "American author," so figuring I'd take an easy way out and choose a gimmick author, I found so much beyond simple children's books that I ended up writing 50 pages to the required 10. He died in 1991 and the paper was written in 1994, so his death didn't affect me until years after his death.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.