Whatever: Being Poor

I've been asking, "why didn't they evacuate?" but this puts things into perspective. My mom was on welfare when we were kids so we ate government cheese and collected bottles for redemption to have an allowance, but reading these draws a distinction for me between just being poor and living in poverty. We always went to the dentist. The bottles brought in enough money to afford He-Man and Transformers toys. We didn't get food from the dump (though my dad's infamous porno magazine collection did come from the magazine recycling). There was always heat AND food (can't imagine how you'd live without either in Maine).

Use international date format (ISO) - Quality Web Tips

Hmmm, I might have used this on a recent project at work. Instead, given the company's heavy US bias I opted to use a different format with an abbreviation for the month to eliminate the ambiguity about which number stands for day and which for month. The format I chose was "6 Sep 2005" which at least has a logical progression from most specific to least specific, even if it is reversed from the ISO recommendation.

Data Tables and Cascading Style Sheets Gallery

The "zen garden" of CSS tables. Yup, some of us geeks mostly forms and tabular data all day, so we enjoy junk like this. Actually, a number of them are quite nice. One might hope that if this project were to stick around for even a little while longer the few really bloody aweful submissions might be removed. And if you're not reading this in a feed reader you know that I've a fairly high tolerance for garishness.

The US Open 2005 - TV Schedule

on USA and CBS. of course with analogue cable being shut down at the end of the year we don't get USA, so I'll have to catch the first showings on CBS. Then after next weekend we can drop cable TV.

ThinkGeek :: R/C Laser Tag Shocking Tanks

ok, these are doing so many things right. when there aren't animals around to chase and torment (dogs, cats, ducks) the next best thing that you can do with a remote controlled vehicle is race or fight other remote controlled vehicles. Usually this means slapping down fifty bucks for each one, but the price point is down around video game levels at fifty bucks for the pair. and while racing and crashing remoted controlled vehicles is fun, shooting at each other is even better, especially when an electric shock adds that missing physical response when you're not actually destroying the toys.