two and two makes five

iMac Resurrection

Picking up iMac tomorrow. Working like a charm. No charge for service. That's what I call good news. :)

Dead iMac

No powering on, no warranty. Waiting for the diagnosis. Thankful for Time Machine.

My Wordle

A Wordle of the front page of this blog:

Download Firefox, Set a Record, Get a Great Browser

Dear people using Internet Explorer,

Why? Firefox is much better. So today, on the launch day of Firefox 3, you can help set the world record for the most software downloads in a single day by downloading Firefox, which I promise is better than IE. Click here for the free download.

Back to the blog...

Somehow my saved passwords got cleared out of the web browser that I use to post on this blog. That means that to log in to my blog and post and edit and what-not, I had to enter my username and password again. The only problem is that it has been too long since I've done that and I had no idea what my username or password is.

After four days of intermittent attempts to log in, I'm back to the blog. Maybe I'll even post something worthwhile sometime. Right now, though, Amy and I are taking my parents off to the wineland mountains for the day. :) Happy Friday!

Loads of Links

Things I wanted to blog in 2007 but never got around to...

• Estimates of the number of people living with HIV/AIDS reduced by UNAIDS
• Out of bread in Zimbabwe
• Top 10 Environmental Blogs
• South Africa is a human trafficking "hot spot"
• South Africa is losing the battle against HIV/AIDS
• Sad story and shocking pictures of Burmese monks dumped in the jungle
• Quote: "I am both Muslim and Christian"
• One out of every five pregnant women in the Western Cape Province (South Africa) is HIV+
• Alcoholism and unethical business in South African wine country
• 101 Essential Blogging Resources
• Emerging Missions Agencies (the original)
• Emerging Missions Agencies (the response)
• A Brief History of "Economic Time"

That should keep you busy for a while.

I'm not exactly quick on these things

Um... so my last post was about MacBook Pros being the fastest Windows laptop according to PC World. It seems I'm not the first one to notice this. In fact, I may be one of the last... since this Apple ad has probably been on national TV in the States for a while now. Oh well... enjoy:

Gratuitous Mac Post

I need to post something important that will encourage you, my dear reader, to feel engaged and encouraged to comment and so forth. But my last few attempts at that have fallen short, and I don't have time to think clearly about anything important, having just returned from my short trip. So instead, you're left with this gratuitous Mac post. PC World magazine recently did a roundup of the "most notable" laptops of 2007... and the Apple MacBook Pro was given recognition as... wait for it... the fastest Windows laptop. Yep, beating out Dell, Toshiba, and even some super-fast gaming laptops, the MacBook Pro, which speaks Windows as a second language in a manner of thought, is the fastest laptop computer running Microsoft Windows.

Fastest: Apple MacBook Pro

The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year (through 10/25/07) is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we've tested this year--or for that matter, ever--is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro's PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway's E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook's score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn't care less whether you run Windows.

Where have you been, Steven Nicholson?

I've been here, throwing sheep at friends on Facebook.

Huge Demographic Data Collection - 101 Cities Lists

If you're interested in US demographics, this web site is an amazing collection of data in the form of "101 Cities Lists." It shows the top 101 cities in the USA ranked by just about any criterion you might imagine.

A sample:

• Top 101 cities with the most people leaving home to go to work at strange times (12 PM - 5 AM) (population 500+)
• Top 101 zip codes with the lowest charity contributions deductions as a percentage of AGI in 2004 (pop 1,000+) » (pop 5,000+)
• Top 101 larger cities with the highest real estate taxes percentage in 2005
• Top 101 cities with the most people taking a ferryboat to work (population 5000+)
• Top 101 cities with the largest differences between morning and afternoon humidity (population 50,000+)

... and hundreds more lists.