I just saw this ad on msnbc.com:

Awesome. I like this part:

Colon Cleanse is the second part of my routine.

It’s called psyllium husk.

Every time you people do this shit,

God kills a kitten.

Stop. Now.

This is the best year-end review I’ve ever written. I promise. 2008 was a year of contradictions. Around May/June, when gas prices spiked, we were told to expect sky-high oil and gas prices…”forever”. I don’t recall anybody predicting $1.35/gallon gas, yet that’s about what I paid this morning.

In 2008 we learned…with no advance warning…that the entire financial industry was suddenly frozen and we’d be thrown into an epic depression unless we instantly printed $700 billion within DAYS! If we didn’t see it coming, why was it so important to fix the problem quickly? Somehow the people who were blind-sided are the same people who now claim to know how bad things will be without bailouts. WTF.

2008 taught us that people will stop buying SUVs if gas prices go up enough. And as soon as prices drop, people will lose interest in the shitty economy cars, because tiny cars with wimpy engines and boring designs suck. GM sucks. Chrysler sucks. Ford sucks. Stupid tax policies on diesel fuels prevent Ford from selling their 65 MPG diesel car in the U.S.

• On Jan 3, 2008, Blu-ray and HD-DVD were still locked in a battle for supremacy. HD sucked for consumers because there were two competing standards. On Jan 4, 2008, however, the war abruptly ended with this announcement from Warner Bros. On Feb 15 Wal Mart announced it would no longer carry HD-DVD, and on Feb 16 Toshiba halted production of HD-DVD hardware. Game over. You barely even remember this stuff by now.
• Best tweet of 2008: “Batman: EPIC BALE”.
• Funniest tweet of 2008: “Gordon Ramsay: one bad puffin eating mofo.”
• Best line in a technical article: “Along with the data processing framework, Doug Cutting also included a fault tolerant, replicated, distributed file system with Hadoop just because fuck you.”
• 2008 was not the year of Linux on the Desktop.
• 2009 might be the year of Android on the Netbook.
• Scala caught a lot of buzz during Jan and Feb.
• Python 3000 came out. Jython saw a resurgence. Sun even hired two high-profile Jython developers.
• Programmer of the year: Charles Nutter. Follow him on Twitter, he’s a machine.
• Apple kicked ass in 2008. MacBook Air, Apple TV 2.0, iPhone SDK in March, iPhone 3G in July, App Store, MobileMe, Solid Aluminum manufacturing process for new MacBooks, etc.
• Vista is about to die. Within the last few days, we learned Windows 7 beta is complete, and expect to see it released in mid-2009.
• Yahoo is dying. Back in June we heard a lot about programmers and management leaving the company. Yang is out. Microsoft failed to buy them.
• Google kicked ass in 2008. GWT 1.5 came out. Chrome 1.0. The Open Handset Alliance now boasts 47 members. Android 1.0 came out. They held their first Google I/O conference. Their apps continue to improve.
• In 2008, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after we found out he used a hooker.
• IL Governor Rod Blagojevich is caught up in a big scandal but so far hasn’t resigned.
• On March 12, a woman became fused to her toilet seat after sitting on it for two years.
• On March 14, Discover told us how the heck a woman became fused to her toilet seat.
• Jack Kevorkian was released from prison and ran for congress. He did not win.
• XM and Sirius merged.
• Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, is the least intelligent movie of the year.
• Grand Theft Auto 4.
• Midwest floods. Southeast droughts.
• Georgia Hillbillies invent another fake Bigfoot story, get front page coverage on CNN.com
• On Sep 10, they activated the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It swallowed the entire universe and produced an identical universe on the “other side”. We didn’t notice, although everything is backwards now.
• A bunch of iPhone Killers came out in 2008. Expect more in 2009. So far they all suck. The G1 is a good phone but it lacks multitouch. That’s weak.
• Word of the year: FAIL.
• Phrase of the year: EPIC FAIL.
• A man named HUSSEIN won. Scary shit. His middle name is HUSSEIN.

That’s about it. Nothing else interesting happened in 2008.

I think I need a death file. Some sort of document that lists all of my online accounts, insurance policies, bank accounts, important documents, etc.

If I were to die suddenly, I don’t know how the hell my wife would clean up the mess I’ve left online.

These are things I fantasize about doing, but probably won’t. They are either impossible, or are things I may not actually enjoy if I had the chance. For example, people turn abandoned missile silos into homes all the time, but in reality, the homes are isolated, cold, and awkward to live in.

• Walk up (or down might be better) the Arch stairs. You can see the “forbidden stairs” as you ride the trams to the top. 630 feet is a long way, however. This would get really painful and boring. But I’m still annoyed that the best part of the Arch is off limits.
• Visit the inside of a Google data center.
• Live on a private island. Because I’m afraid of pirates. And too poor.
• Turn an abandoned missile silo into my home.
• Build a house with at least one hidden room and some secret passageways. This item seems attainable.

I just saw this Amazon advertisement show up in a Google search results page:

Hmm…free shipping…low prices…

For the record, I was searching for the Dumb Blonde Keyboard, which according to a local TV station’s news tease, is one of “this holiday season’s hottest gifts”.

The name is weird, but this is my favorite holiday treat. My Mom’s been making these every Christmas for as long as I can remember. She always makes a bunch, freezing the extras. That never stopped my brothers and I from eating them straight out of the freezer. They really are better warm, though.

Grizzlenuckles

Ingredients

• 20 graham crackers, crushed (2 ½ c.)
• 1 pkg. chocolate chips
• 1 c. coconut
• ½ c. nuts, chopped (my Mom uses pecans)
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk

Directions

• Mix all ingredients together
• Press into well-greased pan (7 x 11 or 9 x 9″)
• Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees
• Cool and cut into squares
• Roll in powdered sugar

I’m now tagging 5 other people to post their favorite holiday recipes and pass it along:

1. Mario
2. Alex
3. Weiqi
4. Mike
5. Bob

I saw this gem a few minutes ago:

They are searching for a murderer who apparently wrecked his car at 3:00 AM a few blocks from my house, and is now on the loose. On my way to work this morning I drove down Bryan Road, where the police were stopping everyone and searching for the guy.

The comments on the article might be written by the same person:

My Stupid American blog is number 35 on this list.

I admire this list — as a way to generate traffic.

1. Make a list of the top 100 blogs in a particular field.
2. Send personal emails to each blog owner.
3. Hopefully many of them will reciprocate with links back to the list.

I did not think of this first because I am only a Stupid American.