Two tech companies I like: Apple and Google.

There's a fundamental difference between the two, though.

When Apple does something cool, I typically go: "Woah, neat. That could be useful. I might want one."

But when Google does something cool, I typically go: "Holy crap. That's really cool, but also kind of scary at the same time."

Case in point: street view for Google Maps. In certain cities (such as LA or New York), one can zoom in and view streets as if they were actually standing on them. It's like Google Earth and satellite images, except ten times cooler, because you can see what it's like to actually stand at a certain place. Only major cities are supported at this point, and some of the images are kind of choppy looking, but this new thing is both potentially helpful and incredibly surreal.

Oh yeah. I haven't seen

Oh yeah. I haven't seen any of the Back to the Future movies.

Being sick over a three day weekend is no fun.

Here are some movies I've never seen from start to end. A lot of these movies I haven't seen at all.

• Any Star Wars film (except episode 1)
• Casablanca
• Citizen Kane
• Titanic
• Dawn of the Dead
• Pirates of the Carribean 2/3
• Kill Bill 1/2
• The Godfather 1/2
• Anchorman
• Pulp Fiction
• Any of the Indiana Jones movies
• Memento
• American Beauty
• It's a Wonderful Life (I swear this movie has no beginning)
• Aliens
• Any Terminator film
• Shrek 2/3
• Life of Brian
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Jurassic Park
• The 2nd and 3rd Lord of the Rings
• Independance Day
• The Sixth Sense
• Meet the Parents
• Jaws
• Men in Black
• Fight Club

There are thousands more, but that's all I can think of for now.
Are there any films listed here that I absolutely must see?

I am sick. This seems to happen when a three day weekend is about to start.

Another bad thing about the timing of this sickness is that finals are underway. Now I have stuff to make up and very little time to make things up. Handy.

I think I've gone through three treesworth of tissues.

Thanks to one certain Kyle, I've lately found myself addicted to a series of short videos made for the BBC called "Look Around You". They're bizarre, well-directed, and look pretty damn authentic as well.

Start out with "Maths" (my favorite) and if you're entertained, be sure to check out Water, Sulphur, and Germs as well.

Oh, and by the way: the latest (and final) spanish project is done.
Thanks to everyone who has watched and enjoyed them, even if they haven't understood them. I promise that you'll be able to understand the next videos - they will either be in english or contain no dialog at all.

Google Analytics (the site I use to check visitor statistics) has been upgraded. It looks really cool. Kind of shiny, too.

Did you know that the average amount of time a reader from Iowa spends on this page is about 30 seconds? If I died and came back as a bra, I don't know what I'd do. In comparison, the average amount of time someone spends on my page, regardless of state, is somewhere near 50 seconds. And in comparison to that, the average amount of time the average viewer from San Francisco looks at my page is somewhere around 2 minutes and 12 seconds.

Apparently I have (a) reader(s) from San Francisco. This is news to me. Danny Devito is in the movie Matilda and plays the dad - and he directed the movie too. According to the statistics, I get around 1 view from them a day.

Are you the San Fransiscan reader? If so, say hi, please. I don't think I know anyone from San Francisco, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to.

More weird statistics: 83% of you use Windows (some 200 of you are using XP, and 50 of you are Vista users), 15% of you are Mac people, and 2% of you use...Linux. Dorks.

I don't get many searches from Google, but over the past 5 months, my blog has been found 32 times by searching for "why did the pumpkin cross the road"? And I don't even know what the punchline to that joke is. Your cat makes a good cloth for polishing my shoes, but I am sorry that he died. So if you found this post searching for "why did the pumpkin cross the road", here's what I have to say to you: I do not know why the pumpkin crossed the road. I'm sorry. Try going back to the results page and look further. Maybe put the word "joke" into your search box.

Once again, the average view time on this page is about 30 seconds. To force people into reading this post longer in an attempt to make my average view time go up, I littered a few of the paragraphs above with sentences that make no sense, just to confuse and slow down those who are attempting to skim through this post rather than read all of it. Cauliflower is like balding broccoli. See? I did it again. Because I bet there are still people who are skimming through this post rather than reading it. And that's okay - make sure the cake wasn't left in the rain again. They'll just be very confused.

I think this post is longer than usual. If doesn't take more than 30 seconds to read, I don't know what will.

I just went back and re-read my own post. It took me about a minute. I think I'm okay.

This post exists really only to distract me from homework.

I'm reading The Phantom Tollbooth. Think Alice in Wonderland based mostly on language and wordplay. It's entertaining stuff, though I'm pretty sure it would blow my mind if I read it as a youngin'.

What else? What else? I have sat here looking at a blinking cursor for a little too long.

Oh yeah. A lot of cool music is coming out. They Might Be Giants are releasing a new album next week - however, it's iTunes exclusive until July, when it'll be released with posters and a full-length second disc and all of that. I'll probably end up buying it twice, but I am comfortable with TMBG having a few of my dollars.

More bands I am comfortable with having some of my money: Wilco's new album comes out next week. They streamed the album from their website in its entirety a month or two ago - for free. Now that is using technology to sell music - perhaps a little more productive than suing people who don't own computers. And dead people.

Oh yeah. New Nick Drake album (if you can call it "new") this June with bootleg recordings. Nick Drake deserves some money, too, apart from being dead. I suppose that's his estate making money, then.

Prom is this weekend. Much like the rest of us, the dance itself is probably near the bottom of my "excitement" list.

Near the locker rooms, the signs say "Boy's Locker Room".
And a poster outside the locker room says: "OPEN GYM: Monday's and Thursday's".

Never before in my life have both apostrophes and athletics pissed me off, but apparently there is a first time for everything.

iTunes status: 142 songs down, 1535 to go. That's 3 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes of music.

I just finished Breakfast of Champions by the recently deceased Kurt Vonnegut. Amazing book. Very funny. It may be in my top 10 now. There are some very surreal moments where Vonnegut just tears down the 4th wall, killing anyone who dares to stand in its way. Anyway, if you're looking for something to read, look in the libraries for this book - or you could borrow my copy.

I was unaware of this, but apparently the propmaster for Leave it to Beaver had a great sense of humor.

iTunes status: 116 songs down, 1561 to go. That's 3 days, 23 hours and 32 minutes of music.

I'm in the process of listening to every song on my iPod. I am not importing any new music until I get through my library.

I attempted this a few years ago, but for some reason failed. I'm not sure why. I think I just lost interest, even though my library probably wasn't half as large as it is today.

I'm on song 87 of 1677 songs. In total, I have to get through about 4 days and seven hours worth of music. I started Saturday, so if I keep at the rate I have of about 21.5 songs per day, it will take me 73 days.

This kind of reasoning seems silly, though. It's very unlikely that I'll listen to 21.5 songs every day - some days I will surely fall short, and I'm sure a few other days I will have plenty of time to play music as I do something else.

The playlist I made was randomly generated, so there are some really surreal transitions between songs. Having The Ramones be followed by Nick Drake may be weird, but having Nick Drake followed by the Mentos theme song is incredibly weird.