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2004 January

Most Valuable Pirillo?

“It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in the category of Digital Media! This award is for your past year of contributions to the community and demonstrated expertise. Being an MVP brings with it a number of advantages, including access to the product team for support and feedback, early looks at Microsoft products, the ability to escalate issues for troubleshooting internally, and more.”

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Social Networking Blues

I'm on Ryze. I'm on LinkedIn. I never touched Friendster. For some reason, Orkut appealed to me. Perhaps its the “in affiliation with Google” tagline? It's getting to the point where we need a Trillian for these types of sites. FriendFan is coming. Microsoft already has Wallop. When will it ever end? How many friends does one really need? Infinity (plus one). Won't you be my neighbor?

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The Ultimate Software Softie

Since I had to reinstall XP this weekend, I decided it was time to upgrade some of my favorite software, too. Outertech just released a new version of their uber-tweaker; CachemanXP is now running happily in my System Tray with auto-optimizations applied. I also nabbed the latest version of VMware Workstation, although all attempts at getting Mandrake 9.2 up and running have failed. DVD X Copy Platinum is on its way, so I'll be making video backups in no time. The entire NirSoft library is also mine. Powerbullet and Wink have proven themselves to be just as vital. Plus, I finally dumped NVIDIA for ATI – and the latest Catalysts seem to be treating me well. More info on what else happened in upcoming Windows Fanatics missives.

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I'm up for a Bloggie

Hot on the heels of a top-ranking Lovemark, I just learned that this weblog's tagline is up for a 2004 Bloggie. At least I'm not up against the almighty Boing Boing again. Regardless, I'd like to wish good luck to Mighty Girl, Rhys Wynne, Sabrina Faire, and Tenth-Muse. May you all prove my tagline incorrect! *wink*

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Fantastic Freeware Finds

Generally speaking, I like saving the cool stuff for Lockergnome's channels, but I found a couple of nifty tools today that I just couldn't wait to share with the world. First, a Command Prompt Explorer Bar (via Julien Cheyssial). Second, PhotoFiltre – one of the best free image editors I've ever found (courtesy of alt.comp.freeware). If it weren't for RSS, I wouldn't have discovered either one of 'em. Jason suggested that we start running a top ten “new feeds” list in our newsletters, so expect to see the first one next week. Oh yeah, I also learned about Peter Hirschberg's classics through my news aggregator. Still think I'm crazy? Good.

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I'm an RSS Addict

A few minutes after Sean told me that Snopes has an RSS feed, I decided to tally my NewsGator subscriptions. Are you ready for this number, folks? 603. And yes, I just cleaned house the other day. How do I keep up with all of 'em. It's simple: I'm a skilled skimmer. I keep each feed categorized, and when I'm ready to read that “type” of information, I browse to the designated Outlook folder. Color me happy (which is a shade off from periwinkle).

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Germs Be Gone

Yeah, I hired a couple of household engineering experts the other day – and ya know what? I'm gonna do it again in a couple of weeks. Sure beats the heck outta decontaminating everything on my own! They swept through the entire apartment with vacuums and Lysol in hand, taking care of objects high and low. Jason and Veronica made the recommendation, and I (obviously) took it.

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Almost Sweet

It's somewhat vindicating to be ahead of the curve. Years ago, I started to do whatever I could to eliminate excess sugar from my diet. Now I'm learning that restaurants like PF Chang's and TGIF's are beginning to offer low-carb menus. Even The Cheesecake Factory is now using Splenda in their desserts! It was difficult to allow Jamba Juice into my life – but I'd never touch fruit otherwise.

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Your Own Handwriting Font

Your prayers have been answered! “Fontifier lets you use your own handwriting for the text you write on your computer. It turns a scanned sample of your handwriting into a computer font that you can use in your word processor or graphics program, just like regular fonts such as Helvetica.” I picked up the link from Typographica this morning. The service appears to be free for the moment, although you may get a server-side error when you click through.

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Oops, I Crapped My Pants

After meeting the author of 'Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation' (and subsequently reading it), I've embarked on an intellectual journey that's been… strange, to say the least. As noted in a recent post, I've been diving into similar writings that explore the idea that humans are actually extraterrestrial hybrids. Before you dismiss the idea outright, you might care to question all the unanswered questions. I personally believe that there's intelligent life out there – and that's exactly why it's choosing not to reveal itself to us outright. Some say Niburu is coming, others say that Planet X is nothing more than bad astronomy. Have YOU ever had a close encounter of the weird kind?

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