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I said in my "Starting a Blog (with Movable Type)" article that one of the best ways to build up your readership is to simply leave comments (preferably good ones) and post TrackBacks to the blogs you read.

And so it has happened again. Amy of spiffarific.com (fabu name) has posted a few comments here lately, and partly because I'm intrigued by the fact that she's a woman, but mostly because I'd never heard of her before, I visited her site. And now she's in my aggregator.

And so it goes. Besides, anyone who can say "the creator is a Microsoft nad-sucking lackey" is someone I'd like to read a little more (hence the title of this post: she left a comment on my blog and turned me into a reader of hers).

Question: If you could live in a past era just so you could wear the clothes in fashion at the time, when would it be?

My Answer: I would live in the stone age, when clothes were mostly optional, because I tend to be somewhat uncomfortable in any kind of "fashion" clothing. I sit around all day in soccer shorts and t-shirts, trying to keep comfort at a maximum.

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

Eric Nick points out that Mario Kart for the GameCube has been announced. YES! I previously wrote about Mario Kart, but I have one question not answered by the preview page linked to above: will it allow Internet play? I'd be interested in seeing who's better: the Nickster or myself.

Awesome! This starts this day off better than any of the past few I've had. Though I should note that I still haven't taken Zelda (Wind Waker) out of the cellophane, yet. Maturity is a weird thing. I still love 'em for the release they provide, but I keep prioritizing other things above them. Like reading, talking to Jamie, and working. 🙂

The new buddy karts are interesting, but I'm afraid that the game will lose the raw simplicity of previous versions. That raw simplicity was quite fair: better players won more often. The more gimmicks you add to a game, the more potential exists for the lesser-skilled players to pull out wins.

For $10,000,000.00 I'd live nearly anywhere for life. I've long said that if I had a million dollars, I'd be set for life. Live off the $50,000/year that the interest would get you, don't spend the rest at all, and work odd jobs to keep yourself busy and have some sp money. $10M? Why, that's like ten times as much! 🙂

I'm a bit late in getting my post up, but oh well. Deal with it. This will be short: I haven't got much time and I'm really far behind on my TiVo playlist.

Diane Warren is pretty awesome, so it's great that she's on. Guest judging and singing her songs, great. Good job. For whatever reason I thought she was fatter than she actually is. 🙂 "They can sing along with your songs" says Ryan, and she quips "Good, cuz I can't." Must be an interesting position to be in.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 678); »

Today I was offered the opportunity (or at least the chance to explore the possibility) of writing a book. Writing a book is on my list of things to do in my life. It's a busy time in my life, and I'm not 100% sure I possess the skill or knowledge¹ to write adequately about the topic at hand, but it's surely an interesting idea, and one which I will pursue.

¹ This may be modesty, this may be a bit of the truth. In all actuality, most people writing books aren't the foremost expert on any given topic, but they're contributing their take on things to the pool of knowledge.

I recently took the empathy quotient and systemizing quotient tests. I scored a 40 and a 39, respectively.

On the systemizing quotient, I fit within the 20-39 group, which says that I have an average ability for analyzing and exploring a system (though obviously at the very top end of "average"). Most people with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism score between 40-50.

I was most surprised by my empathy quotient: only a 40. Men average 42 and women 47. A lot of the questions dealt with social situations, which as a fairly introverted guy, I tend to avoid. I like spending time one-on-one or in small groups, and with my friends, I'm extremely empathetic. I'm a good listener, and I have an intuitive sense as to how someone is feeling. But in a group situation? Bah, that goes right out the window. I'd rather just be at home cuddled up on the couch with a friend - or my dog - watching a movie.

You know you're a nurb when a friend asks you to do something in an hour, so you set a cron job to play an MP3 to remind you…

… and then you blog about it.

I think May 2 will be an interesting day. Jamie packs up and moves out of her dorm, and I have unusual evening plans (not with Jamie, though I guess she'll be at the same place as me).

But anyway, that's all I really have to say about that for now. I think something may force my plans to change anyway.

Question: If you had to die in one of history's disasters, which would you pick?

My Answer: I would have died in the great Apple/Microsoft War of 2004. It rhymes. Oh wait, that hasn't happened yet. Okay, the sinking of the Titanic. Especially if I got to make out with Kate Winslet first. But hey, the question didn't ask why…

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

Unlike everyone else, my only mention of TypePad will be a passing one, and a re-affirmation that any of my friends who want blogs are more than welcome to give me a few bucks (for my Coke addiction, and Gabe, this means you, pay up! :-D) in exchange for my "expertise" (ha ha) and some space on my server.

What the flying fuck does this mean:

To succeed with this service, and as a company, Apple needs to tempt the other 97 percent of computer users.

So I suppose the, oh, 27+ years that Apple's been in business make it a non-success? That they won't be a success until they get above 10% market share? All the money they've made, the revolutions they've begun, and all the money they've got in the bank, those are no longer measures of success?

I hate car analogies as much as the next guy, but c'mon, this is a Business 2.0 article? Do they consider BMW a failure as a company? To Business 2.0 I award a much-coveted Bah!

Princess? Could there be any word more sexist than princess? Just kidding. After all, princes are around too. But don't they dance in that Christmas song or something? Probably. "Prattling princes" doesn't have the same ring to it. Plus they have lords a leaping and stuff. Gay lords, that's weird. Gaylord Perry was a 60's basebally player, I know that much. Good too. But that's okay. Some day I might have a princess of my very own, but I'll never have my own Gaylord Perry.

This 60-second entry was brought to you by today's word from OneWord™.

If there's one thing I don't like about people, it's that they can be awfully two faced. Not everyone, and certainly not even most people, but occasionally you just run across one person who's two-faced enough to ruin your day.

These people act fine in person, but when they have a problem with you, they instead set about, behind your back, making sure everyone else knows about the problem they have with you. It doesn't matter if the problem doesn't really exist or if they could solve the problem by bringing their concerns to you. They derive their pleasure, it seems, from actually having that problem with you, and from sharing it with others. That's twisted, egomaniacal, selfish, childish, and altogether counter-productive.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Dan Gillmor talks about the impact NeXT has had on Mac OS X in this Silicon Valley .com article. This part stuck out as I read it:

NeXT's technology was also way ahead of its time in the tools it offered developers. Programmers could assemble applications with relative ease, using powerful building blocks that were part of a sophisticated toolkit.

Mac users - every last one of 'em - are given free developer tools (and can download them if they've somehow lost their CDs). What impact do you think this has had? Aside from providing thousands of freeware/cheapware applications from hobbyists, free development tools have helped me personally quite a bit. I don't know if Freshly Squeezed Software would exist if we all had to pay for free development tools.