It's News to Me

Tom Simpson has tagged me as a part of the «Why do I blog?» meme that is circulating in the blogosphere.

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The other day when I was talking about Google Notebook, I mentioned that I searched for help on this new tool but couldn't find any. I don't know whether it has just been added or whether I just discovered it, but now I see it does have a Help section. There is also a Tour that you can take for a good overview of the service.

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My son Mike has frequently called me while driving around and asked that I look up some business on Google and give him the location or the phone number. We've jokingly referred to that as his connecting with «Dear-Old-Dad Central» or «the Mother Ship.» However, now such calls are no longer necessary.

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No, this isn't a religious post; the title just seemed appropriate to the day on which I'm making it. I'm referring to my own resurrection from not posting here recently. I didn't die, and I wasn't buried. I was just off exploring various things on the net and have been a bit remiss in posting my thoughts about them. So this will be something of a catch up post, covering a number of things that I found interesting lately.

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Spend the 10 minutes and 24 seconds it takes to watch this video for an excellent overview of what the issues are surrounding Net Neutrality. (Thanks to Paul Stamatiou for the link to the video.)

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Back in May of last year I decided to relinquish the email account I'd been maintaining for more than 10 years and to rely solely on Gmail as my email server of choice. That choice saved me $21.95 per month that I was foolishly spending with an ISP just to keep that email address alive, and with the freed up money from that, I began spending $6.00 less per month for a web hosting plan with Dreamhost, which hosts this blog and a couple of others and which has enough space for many more projects. It was a wise choice that I should have made much earlier.

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As I indicated I was going to do, I didn't turn on my computer at all on Saturday the 24th, and by so doing I observed Shutdown Day 2007. In general, I'd have to say that the day was very pleasant, quite productive and surprisingly easy to do. Some of you who commented on my interest in this day didn't see what the point was. For me, it was to see what kind of reaction I had to the self-imposed restriction not to use of my computer for one day. After awaking at 5:07 AM and going strong until about 11:30 PM, I can say that the event impressed me enough that I may just make it a regular monthly practice.

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Just a quick post near midnight on the 23rd to say, I'll see you on the other side of Shutdown Day 2007. Be back on the 25th. Have fun while I'm away.

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My blog has always been just a place for me to test whether I could put things on the Internet and a way for me to comment on things I find interesting as I surf and experiment with them. Although I've been blogging now for about 5 years, I've never added advertising to this blog to make money from it because I didn't anticipate having much of a readership. However, I've been pleasantly surprised to have gained more readers than I would have ever thought possible. And those readers are gradually becoming accustomed to commenting here occasionally. For that, I'm grateful.

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Today at 9:30 AM I turned off the computer with the intent of leaving it off for two hours. Actually, however, I left it off for 2 and a half hours. It wasn't so bad. I didn't get the shakes or suffer severe anxiety. I'm sure that I'll be able to manage the 24 hour shutdown on Saturday; in fact, I'm looking forward to it.

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