Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

A collection of various and sundry bits of info:

• According to my work PC’s idle process, the system has been on for 4824 hours, or almost exactly 201 days. I guess I should reboot the thing, but at this point I’m sticking it out as long as I can just to see if I can surpass a year. I’m not sure why, but this waxes my ego quite a bit.

• I’ve been tasked with running some mock interviews for Davis College graduates in the Computer Networking program there. That’ll be fun.

• I read my first James Bond novel last Friday. It was The Man With The Golden Gun, which I chose because it was perhaps my favorite Bond flick.  It turned out to be almost nothing like the movie, but I guess I should have expected that. I decided to read the reviews of it on Amazon after I began reading it (the natural order of things as I see it), only to discover that it is widely considered one of the worst Bond novels in the series. I still managed to enjoy it regardless.

Incidentally, this was the last Bond book by the original author, as Ian Fleming died while the book was just about finished. I’ve since read the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, so I’ve accidentally started at the end and then started over at the beginning of the series.

So far, I’m quite pleased with the books. They read very quickly and keep interest the entire time. I intend to read through the whole series, which at this rate should give me something to do until May.

It’s also inspired me to go back and re-investigate my long dormant fascination with the Bond franchise. The last film I saw was The World Is Not Enough, and I finally broke about a decades worth of disinterest in the films by watching Casino Royale (the new, Daniel Craig one) this past weekend. I was pleased with it, though not ecstatic; 7/10. I’ll definitely be checking out some of the old classics like Goldfinger and Live and Let Die soon.

Out of curiosity, anyone here a Bond fan?

…and we’re back. Spring Break went by without too much of a fuss; a trip to Ann Arbor, a LAN party, another trip to Ann Arbor for a concert on St. Patrick’s Day, a company banquet at the Glass Pavilion. I completed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and picked up God of War as a new game to indulge in for an hour or two every week. So far, I like it quite a bit.

Now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, we can get to the meat of this post. I am an obsessive absorber of information – like a thirsty sponge, I seek reading material on whatever subjects I deem to be worthy. Toward this endeavor, I have amassed a mental list of sites that I typically find to be interesting, and that I find myself checking regularly (or semi-regularly). They are as follows:

News
Slashdot – Probably the site I invest the most time and energy into reading. I read all the summaries religiously, plus the comments for any articles that interest me enough. I even comment myself from time to time.
Yahoo! – More or less just a habit from the days of using web portals. I usually check the headlines here to see if there is anything interesting, which there occasionally is.
Electoral Vote – Owned and operated by computer science legend Andrew Tanenbaum, I’ve been using this site as my primary insight into politics since 2004. Fairly objective and profoundly insightful, the site’s major gadget is a graph which amalgamates polls to show you what states are leaning where, along with possible explanations for those trends.
Memory Alpha – Star Trek wiki; I check the news section for word on the new Star Trek film.

Blogs
Bruce Schneier – Probably my favorite pundit on matters of security, cryptography, and computer science. Great resource for links to new research and news stories with added commentary and occasional essays/editorials. After /., probably my most visited resource on the web.
John Scalzi – Sci-fi writer whose work I’ve never read, but I nonetheless enjoy his blog quite a bit. Lots of various and sundry bits that run the gamut of writing advice, amusing anecdotes, social/political commentary, interest pieces, and general geekery. What a blog should be.
William Bennett – Creator/frontman of Whitehouse. Lots of short but insightful essays, observations and opinions on culture, and movie reviews. Always throught-provoking.
Wil Wheaton – Honestly, most of his updates aren’t that interesting to me, and he updates it sporadically on top of that. I guess its just the novelty of reading Wesley Crusher’s blog that keeps me coming back.
Jhonen Vasquez – Creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, staple reading for my social group back in high school. Later went on to make Invader Zim. Only discovered last week, but it’s been very entertaining and will likely make it into the usual rotation.

Humor
Somethingawful – Everyone gives me a look when I tell them I don’t read the forums. Just the Front Page News and a couple other sections. Kinda hit or miss, but worth it for the occasional side-splitter.
Seanbaby – Another hit or miss comedy site with treasure trove of great archives that I’ve read on and off for over a decade. Updated every Thursday.
The Best Page In the Universe – Maddox’s page. Hardly updated anymore, but I still dig the content.
GaijinSmash – A site containing interesting tales and observations of Japan from the point of view of a young black man who moved there as a JET student and stuck around after his contract was up. Done now in the form of a seldom-updated-blog, it started as a series of “editorials” that my friends and I read religiously back in 2005/2006.
XKCD – Nerdy webcomic, good for the occasional laugh or interesting diagram. Updated Mon/Wed/Fri.
ToothpasteForDinner – Classic webcomic by Drew, read mostly for the nostalgia I get for the early ’00s when viewing. Updated daily.
MarriedToTheSea – Another webcomic by Drew whose premise relies on adding captions to old public domain images. Updated daily.
Superpoop – Another webcomic by Drew which uses the formula of adding text, other photographs, or both to pictures found on the net.

Now, the big question: what are YOUR daily must-read websites?