I'm not usually one to steal ideas for a column, but this one was too good to pass up. Macworld had a story in its April edition about free stuff on the Internet. I wouldn't consider myself one of those people who go to different fairs with the sole intention of seeing how many magnets and pencils I can collect in a plastic Go Army bag, but if something's cool and free, I'll give it a try.
Articles
Do you frequently need help with your computer? Does your monitor and/or hard drive occasionally stop working? Are you currently pulling a blanket over your head as you sit in the closet? Then you have come to the right place.
If you've never had any technical difficulties with your computer, you fall into one of two categories:
1. You have never used a computer.
2. You used a computer once and realized it wasn't cooking a grilled cheese sandwich properly.
I'm not ashamed to say I like to cook. I rarely do cook, though, because I never seem to have enough time, or enough energy, or the dog ate my homework.
Some of the stuff I cook, I make up as I go. Other things I've borrowed from my mom, and the rest I pull out of my cookbook. I never thought of looking up recipes on the Web, because if I had time to do that, why wouldn't I just pull a recipe out of the cookbook?
The best way to pick your bracket is to not listen to anyone.
No sportscasters, no sports writers, no cowboys. You shouldn't listen to anyone. You have the brackets in front of you; why can't you make your own decisions?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you are bad in any way if you aren't a college basketball fan. But being from this area, you'd better know a little something about it because if not, your co-workers are sure to avoid you like a 72-year-old cheese log during the next few days.
March Madness is like a vacation; you wait forever for it to get here, then it's over before you know it. But rarely can you go on vacation and have a chance to win prizes and cash. There's a much better chance of just blowing it all.
Understanding and knowing the details of every single type of server on the market today is not necessary to be successful on the Internet. In fact, I've gotten to this point without knowing much of anything concerning a variety of things, including server types, server names and dogsledding.
Very seldom do I read an article on the Web and say to myself, "Wow! I've been wondering how that works since I learned how to make prank phone calls when I was 4 years old!"
Besides the Slap a Spice Girl game, the most useful things on the Internet are the various e-mail, street address and phone number lookups.
That's right folks! You can continue to stalk that high school sweetheart or the person at the gym until your fingers can't type anymore!
I was really surprised how good the ratings were for the first week of the XFL.
I would bet my lunch money that to get to the page you are currently reading, you probably didn't type a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods.