Links R Us
There ain't much to look at anywhere online at the moment, and I'm thinking that I might not bother typing anything up for a few days. I gotta ready up for a bunch of people to come and invade the house, and I still have to wrap all of the gifts I purchased for other people. I also still have a gift I need to find and pick up, heh.

But should you be bored this holiday season and you're hoping that good ol' Jerome can help make you a little less bored, you may want to check out any or all of the stories and games below. And feel free to share your own articles and stuff so I'll be a little less bored. Just don't do anything stupid in the forum (see four posts down).

* Computers: a year in review found at Shary Extreme.
* I wish I got cheap speakers when I had the chance...
* How to make a website for all linked at Camworld.
* The origins of spam also from Camworld.
* Global warming is the sun's fault. As for the ozone hole, well, that's just for show. :p Found at Common Sense Technology.
* More about climates courtesy of dangerousmeta.
* WTC victims' families to get about $1.5 million each. That's a lot of dough! It makes me wish I had someone related to me die on 9/11. Ok, that was the most horrible thing I could have possibly said... :p
* Skit's big-ass page of Osama bin Laden jokes and links.
* Amherst, NY is the safest US city to live in.
* The Salvation Army is illegal is Russia.
* Go KaZaa! I don't need the RIAA taking out my Morpheus.
* A parody at the RIAA's expense linked from Metafilter.
* Contol your Christmas lights using Winamp! That should occupy you for a while.
* I'm only 19% evil.
* If I was a corporate mascot, I'd be the Energizer bunny. Neurotic and paranoid, your inner demons drive you forever onward, ever faster. But even you can't keep running forever...
* A reindeer skating game I found at Weblog Wannabe.
* Hey, check out Squiddy!
* No more Ronald McDonald in France? Anything for more of the "bling bling" I guess. Found at MeFi.
* The real names of celebrities. Jesse Ventura's real name is "James George Janos" while George Michael's name is actually "Georgios Krylacos Panayiotou." No wonder they changed them.
* This soccer game is a pain in the ass.

You're welcome.

Happy holidays if I don't write back in time.

And I thought Traffic was Bad!
Sorry to post again so soon but check this out: 60,000 Germans had to sleep in their cars during a record traffic jam. 60,000! DAMN!

700 Million
That's how much money was paid (after debt) for the purchase of the Boston Red Sox. Now that's a damn lot of money! I would have been happier if the new owners were from the Boston area but what can you do? Funny thing is, that wasn't even the highest bid offered which makes all those suspicions about the team being sold to these guys just so the Expos can be dissolved a little more real. Personally, I don't give a damn about the Expos anyway. In any case in the hopes to get some real conversation going here and not just shit being thrown around, I'd like to here other peoples opinion.

P.S. I really like the moves the Sox have been making as far as getting their lineup in order though!

<useless heading>
Tool: So, Jerome, you don't have a job yet?
me: Actually, I do have some part-time work...
Tool: ... That a real shame. I mean, you spent all of that money for college and you aren't using it for a dog-gone thing!
me: Happy Holidays. *drives away*

This bothered me for a bit, especially since I wasn't allowed to state that I am doing "the work" related to my field of study. Sure, it ain't a full-time well-paid job, but it's better than nothing.

And then I remembered that this guy made a living picking up trash. Then, I smiled.

Jerome isn't too happy
Stop fucking around in my forums.

The idea behind them is not for you to swear up a storm and throw feces at one another. They were put into place in hopes that intelligent conversation would arise. You have a problem with someone else? Take your pissing contest elsewhere. I'm pretty sick of it. Flame wars are counter to what I was intending them to be used for.

Dotcomments is a great tool that works around my RPI and Geocities limitations. Unfortunately, it's not good enough. While I do enjoy the fact that the forums have no moderation whatsoever, I was hoping a certain commenting standard would be held by those who choose to use it. It now becomes clear that I have to look for something better. Something that can filter out ethnic slurs, for starters. Something that will allow me to edit and delete comments that have no place being there. And while dotcomments does give me the ability to track IP addresses (now implemented), it would be wonderful if I could also ban certain IP's from even commenting. Looks like I have some searching to do.

If you feel the need to keep causing shit in the forums, I'll have to thank you when I choose to remove the forums all together.

Am I taking this too personally? Yeah, probably. I've been working on this site for about a year, and I have spent countless nights and weekends data mining the web to find the right web tools to accomplish the goals I wanted to achieve. I've spent several hours coming up with site layouts and design schemes. And I also continue to show interest in this site by posting almost on a daily basis (and sometimes even more frequently) since early February. I don't need you to shit all over it.

I also have high expectations for this site. This site is way cooler than a zillion of the other weblogs out there, and maybe some day more than five people will read it on a daily basis. This site wasn't created solely to entertain my friends and I; I wouldn't mind if some outsiders saw it, liked it, told their friends about it, and then linked to this site or even dropped their own two cents in the forums. That'd be sweet. And then before you know it, AtG gets nominated for things like The Webby Awards and then the traffic starts getting so intense that I have to keep finding new hosts. Great dotcomments debates will take place stimulating the brains of those who read it, and a golden era of modern thinking will usher in.

Are my goals unrealistic? I don't think so, but it's not going to be an easy task to accomplish. But having flame wars aren't helping, either.

So make your move.

This takes a lot of dedication to compile...
And/Or a level of psychosis that only the character portrayed by Steve Buscemi in Con Air could relate to. You know, the guy in the straight jacket? Yeah, him:

A map of Springfield.

I wonder how much of the map is actually just made up, because it seems like it's not possible that all of those businesses and stuff could be located where they are. I mean, was the Stonecutters Lodge ever pictured to be near the monorail? Beats me. But then again, I never took a college course on The Simpsons, so what do I know? And if all of those streets are in fact properly named and located where they should be... damn.

Ha!
This has to be the best joke ever!

Play with yourself

Load Josh into your spank-o-dex and play on:

First thing to amuse yourself with: Snowbowling.
When you get bored with snowbowling, head on over to ohyesitis.com, or you can also view its sister site, ohnoitisnt.com. The fun lasts for hours!

And when you are finally bored with all that, you can check out this article about two brothers that played with themselves. And not in the disgusting way you are thinking either. No no, in a far more disgusting way. This could perhaps qualify as the weirdest wackiest, grossest thing I have ever seen on the web, and believe me, by this point I've seen a WICKED lot of weird things. So you've been warned.

A match made in Heaven
I think this guy should marry this woman. It's a perfect match!

Unfortunately, the guy isn't looking for a woman, which is kinda problematic. The solution may lie in eliminating the gnomes in his house. All 900 of them. I'm sure he could sell them all and make enough to buy the woman... or a toaster oven.

And one must question why a 24-year-old internet entrepreneur is auctioning her hand in marriage. She never has time to meet guys. Right. I bet she has a huge debt to her pimp or crack dealer that she hasn't been able to pay back since all of the internet stocks imploded on themselves. So, she has to pay off her bills by selling herself online using glamour shots. I bet she has great teeth, heh. Who needs love when you can marry for money? "I thought that by creating an online auction I would be able to reach as many men as possible and hopefully prove that the Internet is not full of cyber-geeks, there are normal people out there, and I'm looking for one as a husband!" You may not want a "cyber-geek" as a husband, but there are many worse types of guys than those, Sister.

PS2, Spam, Rosemary, and Time
Couple of interesting links I found courtesy of Slashdot.

The first one is from the Korea Times. Someone did a study (who the hell thinks of these studies anyway?) and discovered that an average Internet user receives an average of 1,613 unsolicited e-mail advertisements per year. Damn. What a bunch of spaming whores. Hell, I stopped using ICQ after I kept getting ads for porno sites every 3 minutes. And how about the 17 popup windows that appear every time you open a website? Some sites (Yahoo!) even have friggin ads that float around your screen, obscuring your view of the page and causing you to punch the hell out of your computer monitor. I mean, even this site (thanks to Geocities) has a stupid ad that is probably covering the text of this article (although sometimes hot chicks are in that ad!).

The second article is about console game sales this holiday season. Apparently, the PlayStation 2 is beating out the newly released Xbox as well as the GameCube. Interesting….

Now you may be wondering about the “Rosemary” part of the title. Well, that was just thrown in for effect. But the “Time” part wasn’t! I was watching the news last night and caught the end of it. (You know the only 5 minutes of the entire broadcast that doesn’t talk about rapes, murders, bankruptcy, terrorism, etc.?) And an interesting segment was on about how each day is actually longer than the last. In other words, the number of hours in each day is increasing. Ever since the Earth got a moon (about 4 billion years ago) the spin of the earth has been slowing. This is because of the way the moon causes the oceans to slosh around or something. Anyway, 400 million years ago days were only 22 hours; 400 million years from now days will be 26 hours long. So even though this Friday is the shortest day of the year (in terms of daylight of course), it will actually be longer than today was. Cool.

Now that's what I call music! (Volume 431)
I love the music industry, particularly the RIAA. First, they wonder why people won't buy a CD for about $18 if there's only one or two good songs on a less than $1 piece of plastic. Then, they get pissy when they hear people are stealing songs via a serivce known as Napster, and then they launch an ineffective holy jihad against other such decentralized file-swapping programs like Aimster and Gnutella. Then comes the so-called "unrippable CD's" (ha!), and now in the latest chapter of RIAA horseshit, let's charge the consumer twice per album: once for letting you play it in your stereo system, and the other to play the CD through your computer. What a great idea! *cough*

I feel the need to bitch and complain about this article, but I think you already know all of the things I (or almost anyone else) could say about this dumb concept.

Its surprisingly warm
60 Degrees, and the sun is totally out now, after being hidden most of the morning.

Optimism abounds because of this!

What a piece of crap day
I didn't feel like getting up this morning. It's all rainy and shit. The commute sucked and it's barly warm enough so that there is a cold rain instead of snow. Sucky sucky.

It's a good thing it's snowing right now
Because I must say, I didn't get to shovel enough last week to warm up for the upcoming snowy season. And at least this time around, the snow is heavier, there's a lot more of it, and I don't think it's going to melt away in under a week. I mean, where was the backache from too much shovelling? Where was the wasted effort when it starts snowing again hours later? Where was the feeling that I can't wait to go back inside where it's nice and cozy and warm? It wasn't there. But I'm sure it will be today. :p Now, if you don't mind me, I'm gonna put some shovelling war paint on, dress accordingly, find myself a sweet plastic shovel, and try to find my car.

This might possibly be the funniest post we've ever had
If you know Keith, that is. Someone posted his picture to Fark.com, and then people photoshopped their own versions. Hilarity ensues!

This:

+
Photoshop

=

Keith killed Kennedy

Click on the picture to see more like this.

Go Lions!
I knew you wouldn't go 0-16! :)

Someone is all high and mighty
Personality type: Unlovable, uncommunicative, stupid, bossy, self-hating, jerk.

No matter what you do, no one likes you and no one even notices you exist. You very rarely, if ever, have meaningful relationships of any kind with anything other than your own anatomy.

You find it impossible to express your true feelings or emotions. Your friends (if you have any) think you are a liar, an unfeeling bitch/bastard or retarded. Probably all three.

You are basically thick. If you think back, you will realise this is true. Most people you meet are smarter than you. This is because you are stupid. Ask a friend to explain this to you if some of the words are too long.

You are constantly telling people what to do. This is because you are basically incompetent and lazy. People make voodoo dolls of you and put them through paper shredders.

Deep down you hate yourself and that is why you always fail. Don't worry, you deserve to fail.

Your rating as a human being: 2%

The person/character whom you most resemble is: Scrappy Doo (a dog)

----------------

Damn. I think I'm going to go run away and cry now.
But if it's any consolation, I don't know anyone that managed to get a human being rating greater than 14% on this test I was given information about from Weblog Wannabe.

Should you choose to take the test, and you should because filling out unscientific online tests is the cool thing to do, one of the questions will ask you which site is better: totl.net or brunching.com. I'll spare you the effort of looking at either site and tell you to vote for brunching.com. Totl.net uses the Helvetica font, which automatically makes it the crappier site. That font is so hard to read, I don't see why people use it. Ever.