I've recently started looking at Global Warming Theory, and have come to this conclusion:

They're looking at the wrong problem.

With so little data on weather, it is impossible to predict how things will happen! When sunspots can do more to warm and cool the planet than can all CO2 outputs combined, I'm not too impressed. 

More thoughts on this later as I read more, from both sides.

(a passing thought - what if the enviromental groups were concerned with bettering the lives of people, instead of filling pockets and gaining political clout?)

My last Grandpa died recently. I really miss him, because he was my favorite grandparent.

He was a legendary salesman; He had been selling food for decades, from selling chips, bread, and finally acting as a food distrubuter for a half dozen Dillons grocery stores. He always had candy that had been "damaged", ready to give away. We would sometimes get odd stuff from him, like discontinued barbie cereal (with the bag taken out of the box, so we didn't realize why there were pink marshmallows), soup ladles to use for everything from soup to the backyard sand pile (he had cases of them!), promotional Gatorade stuff like t-shirts and inflatables, and sorts of other good stuff.

I remember going to his twice-yearly garage sale, and watching the people wander through. We would get there early in the morning and carry boxes of stuff up from his basement, and from our car. I sometimes would bake cookies to sell for a for cents each, and sit at the "cash register" table with a box of them.

When we were lucky, he would take us fishing. I never really liked fishing, but spending the whole day with my Grampa was worth it! We fished rivers, lakes, and ponds. Sometimes he would give us fish that he had caught on a long weekend, because he wouldn't have been able to eat them all himself.

What I remember him for the best is that when something needed to get done, it would would always get done.

--Chris

The first big social network site I was involved in was deviantART. From there, I've moved on to Facebook (awful), Napalm Riot(amazing even in beta, and HUGE), and TheSixtyOne. If you hadn't guessed, I'm "Infog" on each of those sites. Well, except Facebook.

I think that what I like about each of these sites is that I am able to get more from it than I would a normal, non-interactive site, AND, the owers of these sites have dreamed big and beatiful.

The first point - Big. They aren't big in a way similar to Facebook or MySpace. Facebook and MySpace have no real purpose but to connect people. Once people get there, they need to have a reason to stay - and that would be talking just to talk. The sites mentioned above, though, are centered around something. deviantART, if you can't guess, is dedicated to sharing and selling visual art. Napalm Riot is all about computer games, getting people to talk about and group together around these games, and play them together. TheSixtyOne is for finding music, listening to it, promoting it, discussing it, and even creating and posting your own if you want. These sites can be so enourmos only because they have a guiding concept beyond social networking.

The second point - Beatiful. These three sites have REALLY nice designs! Unlike the mishmash of Myspace, they are consistent (but still a little bit custumizable). If you can't tell by looking at this site, I like my visual world to be very organized. I actually took a minor in Graphic Design in college. (I'm a little bit too practical to be hired as a concept designer, I tend not to jump off the deep end on my designs.) The three sites all have a coherent visual aspect. Napalm Riot, for instance, has a darker-colored theme, and has things like box art and screen caps in its tidy on-screen modules.

These elements work together to make sites that are enjoyable to browse through, easy to use, and encourage actual interaction between people as real people, not just faceless content authors. Its nice to see different peoples' lives, and to be reminded that real people DO exist on the internet.

-- Chris

I've learned enough about google sites to finally publish one - It is a great improvement over Google Pages (and these both being an improvement over Geocities, and other blogs/sites I've tried out).

Deciding on a format for your website is always difficult. I've never been able to come up with a good looking website, personally. Mostly its my lack of understanding when it comes to how webpages are built, and how to make the flow of a website easy to follow. :)

I hope this will be the last personal site I create for a while. It being Google, I think that it will be improved over time, instead of letting it die. Yay!

So, wish me luck. Maybe I'll start broadcasting my life over the interwebs soon.