Geeks invented the internet, so it is only fitting that they would also invent the emoticon.


According to an article called “Smiley Lore :-),” the emoticon was invented on a computer bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon on September 19, 1982. Scott E. Fahlman, Research Professor of Computer Science, actually takes credit for bringing the emoticon into “popular” use (although in all fairness he doesn’t denounce the possibility that these symbols had been previously used by other individuals).

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)

From: Scott E Fahlman



I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:



:-)



Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark

things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use



:-(

So far I am very happy with the purchase. I don’t know why I waited this long to upgrade.

Reason #2 came from: Top Ten Signs You’re a BlackBerry Addict.

Please excuse any mess …
And leave a comment if you notice any formatting or other errors.

03/27/2009 Update:
I edited my theme’s CSS style sheet to fix the image/text-wrapping issues. The strange characters seem to have disappeared on their own.

Two days ago I added [yet] another email account to my seemingly never-ending collection. And like a majority of my email accounts, I set it up to forward to my “main” Gmail address, where I make heavy use of sorting and labeling. And where I also change my options so I can “send mail as” the forwarded address through it.

One can imagine the organizational nightmare that begins to occur when you have – say – nine or ten email accounts’ worth of mail ending up in just one place. Not to mention the fact that any email sent using the “send mail as” function in Gmail shows where it’s actually being sent from (i.e., that one “main” address). In Gmail’s defense, replies always come back to the right place, but it doesn’t look very “smooth” or in some cases professional. So I began a frantic search for a solution.

At least a few of you are probably wondering why I don’t just use Outlook or some other such program, and my simple answer is that I want to be able to access my mail from more than one location. And I don’t just mean access in the simplest form of the word – I mean control. Apart from paying $7-$10/month for a hosted Exchange server or attempting to set up my own server on my webhost, there aren’t a whole lot of viable options.

Then I found Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition. It doesn’t exactly provide me with “anywhere” access like a webmail product could. But it does offer me something that might be a workable compromise. It offers me the ability to install a version of the Thunderbird application on a USB drive. (And in hindsight will also offer me the ability to work with my mail offline – something nearly impossible to do strictly through webmail.

I currently have The Thunderbird portable app set up to access a few of my smaller email accounts. Aside from some minor adjustments and tweaking, it appears to be working surprisingly smoothly. If all goes well over the next several days, I will probably migrate more accounts in that direction … and get a bigger flash drive.

I did not want to join Twitter. I ignored requests and avoided jumping on the bandwagon that seemed to be taking over the nation. Until last night anyway.

Today I tried to access the site several times, and at least three of those times all I found was this great white whale with its greatly lame message.

Are you kidding me? I joined a service to be put on virtual hold?

I don’t think so!

I remain wholly unimpressed.

07/09/2007 Update:
After having nothing but troubles with the new version of the K2 theme, I ended up having to abandon it. Consider the green part of the theme temporary, and as soon as I decide what color I really want it … I’ll be making more changes.