Randy Morin with a lesson on how not to treat your customers.  Reminds me of the time I got completely blown out by this hag at the airport because I tried to pay for a water bottle at the wrong cash register.

MG Seigler brings truth to the Continental free not-Wi-Fi story.  Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and the Blackberry network?  Obviously, Yahoo is paying Continental some money to force people to its network, at the expense of everything we really need.  This is bad news getting spun as good news.

Stereogum points to some new Sun Kil Moon.  Here’s where you can listen to it.  Glen Tipton was my favorite song of 2007.  On the retro hand, Stereogum also has some vintage Hall and Oats, complete with bad hair and intermittent lip synching.

After all the (very tasty) deer I ate this past week, it was troubling to learn that vegetarians are healthier, smarter and richer.  Maybe, but that deer was a vegetarian and he got eaten.  That’s not so smart now, is it?

So 80 people go to Chuck E Cheese, get in a brawl and end up getting pepper sprayed.  The next day it almost happens again.

I really enjoy Survivor and the Amazing Race.  But a show about Michael Vick’s dogs is absurd.  I wonder if they go visit him now that he’s in the pound?  I hope I don’t accidentally record every episode and watch it.

Here are some cool photos of a diamond rush ghost town in Namibia.  Here’s more about the town’s history.

Thomas Hawk on Barack Obama, Dave Winer and pot.  We have a good friend who is very interested in politics.  She’s always putting signs for all the wrong people in her yard.  I told my kids they don’t have to study up on elections- that all they have to do is drive by Sharon’s house, write down every name on the signs there, and vote for the other person.  I’m pretty sure that I would take the same approach with signs in Dave’s yard.  Or on his blog.

Here’s reason number 112 why I say no when my kids ask if they can play with their turtle.  Reason number 1 is because if he bites you, he won’t let go until it thunders.

Good advice for living a happy life.

It was bad enough when he didn’t see the first one coming.  Then there was the second one.

PDFTextOnline converts PDF files to text, for free.  Oh yeah, and online.  Text…PDF.  It didn’t work all that well for me based on a couple of test documents, but it’s a cool idea.

Lifehack has 7 Habits to Win in Office Politics. I’m a little bothered by the “win” in that title. How about to manage office politics? Anyway, habit number 6 – seek to understand before seeking to be understood – is also one of traits of the best negotiators. And probably the best bloggers too.

Rick Mahn says bye-bye to Facebook. You know, no matter how hard people try to make it otherwise, Facebook was, is and always will be primarily for college age kids. I really agree with Rick when he says:

While some have made a pretty good case for Facebook, it doesn’t change how it’s viewed by business, or how useful it is for me. I’m astounded at home much time everything takes and how limited everything is. Not to mention the data-ownership question.

Facebook, like most of the social networks, is amplified cocktail chatter- everyone talking over each other and no one really listening. Net out the advertorials and you end up with a lot of really marginal content.

Today’s list: TDavid on the 8 types of blogs for 2008, with a little Newsome.Org editorial:

1) Linkblog. Only marginally interesting without added content. I can find plenty of links in my feed reader.
2) Moblog. Accretive if used in moderation.
3) Podcast. Fun to do, but does anyone really listen to them?
4) Video blog. Home movies were boring in the 70’s. Videos are a plus if done well and in moderation.
5) Microblog. A graffiti wall. Fun in small doses.
6) Miniblog. I don’t know much about these. Why spread your content all over the seven seas when you can consolidate it in your main blog? All this data spread can actually work against personal brand building if it’s unchecked.
7) Liveblog. Seems like an awful lot of work and not much bang for your buck. As soon as the event is over, you’ve lost the advantage over regular blog posts.
8) Regular Blog. Here comes my main point: why can’t a regular blog encompass all 7 of the others?

Now that we’ve managed to bring wolves back from the brink of extinction, let’s start shooting them. Amazing.

So there’s this cat.  With no eyes.  Yet it hunts birds and squirrels.  That’s pretty frickin’ awesome.

Rob Gale has a nifty Rambo Death Chart.  When Rambo finally goes in another year or so, they’ll have to add old age to it.

Richard Querin discovered that you can embed Google Docs Presentations.  That’s pretty cool.  Here’s one I did in about 2 minutes:

I have to admit, the more I really look at Google Docs, the more impressed I am.  I have set my kids up with Google Docs in lieu of Word.  They’re happy and it saves me money.

Sad news of the day: we’ve got global warming extincting polar bears in the north and the U.S. government extincting jaguars in the southwest.  You can always make another dollar, but you can’t make another polar bear or jaguar once we kill them all.

RIM upgrades the Blackberry, which is fine and dandy, but until it opens up the system to third party developers, it’s always going to be playing catch-up.  If (and based on the fact it doesn’t already, this may be a big if) the iPhone is ever able to pull Microsoft Exchange email, Blackberries days will be numbered.

I was wrong about Last.fm.  Rather than join the video herd, it’s joining the audio streaming herd.  Here are more details.  As usual, Techdirt brings truth to the equation.  I went to Last.fm, looked unsuccessfully for the new features for a minute or so and split.  All this streaming may (or may not) be wonderful, but if no one can find it, it doesn’t matter.  It looks like Yahoo (and eventually every other site on the net) is going to get on the bandwagon.

Penelope Trunk has an interesting read on happiness.  I agree with most of what she says, particularly the part about people too often blaming their jobs when the true happiness inhibitor lies elsewhere.  I’m a little underwhelmed by her good job or bad job test.  I scored 5, which is pretty good.  Somehow, though, I’m not sure 4 questions is enough to tell how good or bad your job is.

Prob Logger (sorry, that’s just how I read it) has 9 benefits of Twitter for bloggers.  Here they are, with a little editorial:

1. Research tool.  Maybe but searching your Google Reader feeds is a lot better and easier one.
2. Reinforce your personal brand.  Definitely, as long as you use Twitter to supplement your blog and not to replace it.
3. Promote content.  As I’ve mentioned before, this is spam.  I’ve done it once or twice, but I generally un-follow people who do this too much.
4. Find new readers.  Probably, but this is dangerously tied to number 3.
5. Networking.  Nah, I don’t buy this.  I think the social networks are neither.  They are just amplified cocktail chatter, where everyone is yapping and no one is listening.
6. Previews.  I wouldn’t know.  I doubt I have a single reader who’s interested in a trailer for my future blog post.
7. Speedlinking.  I don’t know what speedlinking is, so I’ll pass on this one, other than to say I suspect sharing via Google Reader is easier and more efficient.
8. Story gathering.  Maybe, but again feeds are much better for this.
9. Find out what people really think.  Here’s what I think- I bet the percentage of Twitter posts that actually get responses is miniscule.

Stereogum has Patterson Hood on the Drive-By Truckers’ demanding, and excellent, new record.

Cracked just gets better and better.

Netflix beats its fourth-quarter estimates.

PC World has a pretty detailed look at the forthcoming Windows Vista SP1.

Blunt drops out of the Missouri governor’s race.  Cheech and Chong reportedly bummed.

CBS and Last.fm about to announce…something.  Undoubtedly something video related.  Yawn…

For those who, like me, wonder why in the world Bank of America is buying Countrywide, CNN has the answer.  Sort of.  All I know is that I bought BOA one morning at $40 and change, thinking it wouldn’t go below $40.  It did that very afternoon.

When I was a kid, I loved the Brady Bunch.  I’ve seen every episode, and I even read Barry Williams’ Growing Up Brady book.  So I was excited to read that Barry has joined the blogosphere.  Mashable has more.

In addition to a few other services, most notably Haloscan’s trackback service, that increased my pages’ load time, I have also dumped Technorati and started tracking inbound links and comments via Google Reader.  Louis Gray tells us how to track inbound links with Del.icio.us.

The Telegraph has a list of 100 books every child should read.  It’s a good list, but where in the world is Goodnight Moon!?  Or the Nutbrown Hare?

Any time I see a list of the worst anythings, I just know number one or two will be something absurd, just for the sake of a reaction.  Calling Vista the second biggest all-time tech flop is ludicrous beyond words.  Is it perfect, no.  Does it need work, of course.  But it is on way too many computers and soon to be on way too many more computers to be placed up there with DRM and push technology.  Speaking of push technology, I had a PointCast receiver (or whatever you called it).  It was, by far, the best screen saver I’ve ever seen.

For every job found due to web cams, ten will be denied or lost.  I hope this fad goes the way of the pet rock before my kids hit their teenage years.  And, yes, I’m really glad it didn’t exist during mine.

Stereogum has a new Springsteen video.  Good song.

Why in the world would Google buy the New York Times?  All it would be getting is the brand name.  Newspapers are dead, but there’s no way the folks who own the New York Times would admit that in public.  If I were Google, I’d wait a few years and watch the price go down as old media continues to struggle with online distribution.