LemonySnicket.com. Looking for a fun read to fill the time before the next Harry Potter book comes out, I happened upon the “A Series of Unfortunate Events” books, a series of mock-Gothic, Gorey-influenced books for kids featuring the intrepid Baudelaire children by the pseudonymous Lemony Snicket. The books are second only to the Harry Potter series on the Best Sellers lists.

Turns out the mysterious Mr. Snicket is actually author Daniel Handler, who claims to hate “children’s books” (”The idea that a bookworm boy would want to read about sports always cracked me up”).

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faqts.com. A set of knowledge bases on a variety of topics.

Particularly useful to me (in debugging the database of my cast recordings) is mysql.faqts.com and php.faqts.com (for example, how do you use ‘order by’ and ‘group by’ together?).

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I’m heading to Chattanooga (yes, on Xmas eve) to visit my folks for 17 days. What I accomplished today was:

1. Figuring out how to fit everything into one small suitcase.
2. Ripping 30 or so albums to MP3s CDROMs.
3. Finding out that Jason Kottke linked to my TiVo page, realizing my recent attempt to redesign looked like shit, and hurriedly dredging up an old site template that I didn’t absolutely hate.

During my vacation, I’ll be:

1. Writing about what is likely to be a harrowing flight experience as I fly to Tennessee via 4 puddle-jumper legs.
2. Taking advantage of being in civilization (ie, near a mall) and shopping at the new Old Navy and Best Buy by my folks.
3. Shopping for a CDROM-based MP3 player.
4. And, hopefully coming out to my parents.

Merry Christmas!

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Matt’s in the market for a MP3 player. After reading about Ron’s preparations for his Holiday trip (transfering his CD collection to his Nomad Mp3 Jukebox), I got the hankering to buy a large-volume MP3 player for my trip home (so I don’t have to pack a lot of CDs). Sadly, the local Walmart and Staples didn’t have the Nomad, but they do have the the RCA MP3/CD Player and the
Philips MP3/CD Player (both of which I’ve found widely differing reviews for).
[Read more →]

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How often should I change my oil? I realized today that I hadn’t changed my car’s oil in over a year, but hadn’t reached the 3000 mile mark yet either (the farthest I ever drive is the 2 miles to Walmart). I check the level every so often — I just hadn’t change it. Is the 3 month mark for changing oil really that important?

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