Geek Break

How adorable is this?

It's a picture, courtesy of National Geographic, of Husky pups in Greenland. Technically some little island off the coast of Greenland where they are supposed to grow up to be sled dogs for ice hunters. Only their island is shrinking because of climate change. So really, a little less adorable and a lot more sad. The picture though came to me on my iGoogle home page. If you don't have an iGoogle home page, I highly recommend it. There are all sorts o' gadgets and fun little doo-dads you can add to it. It's a HUGE time-waster so if you're easily sucked into little projects like this, be prepared. Here's what is on mine:

• Quote of the Day
• Literary Quote of the Day (have to put that English degree to work whenever possible)
• Font of the Day (I have a font obsession and am in need of a 12-step program if you know of any)
• Color Scheme of the Day (yeah I know, weird, but actually helps me with my job)
• Art of the Day (not as exciting as anticipated. I'm thinking of dumping it)
• Weather (very handy)
• NYTimes Top Stories
• Mah Jongg (what am I, 80?)
• Chinese Proverb of the Day (it seemed like a good idea at the time)
• A little game where you click little blobs of color to make them disappear, then all the other little blobs shift around when that happens and you click more, trying to end up with no little blobs of color. It's maddening.
• Dictionary.com's Word of the Day (see bullet #2)
• Synonym match-up Game (wow, I'm just fully realizing what a dork I am)
• National Geographic Photo of the Day
• And finally, my favorite, as it combines two of my most favorite things in the world - Muppets and Mocking the Bush Administration: the Sesame Street Terror Alert System

Today's Terror Alert Level is Ernie/Bert...
and brought to you by the letter Q....

But anyway... back to National Geographic. The photos are always good, but when they're really good/intriguing, I click on them, go to the National Geographic home page, and then get sucked into a whole other geeky world of fascinating science news and information.

For instance. Did you know that they saw a rare monkey in Kenya they thought was virtually extinct? Pretty cool considering we've killed off almost all of our primates.

AND did you also know that it looks like dinosaurs were likely done in by volcanoes and NOT an asteroid? See, had we known this earlier, the world probably could have been saved from that horrible Bruce Willis Armageddon movie.

By the way, one of my aliases is "The Queen of Useless Information," so my sharing of these little factoids is not going to end any time in the near future. If you know me, you know that I often start sentences with "Did you know..." I'm the person at the cocktail party they call over to solve age-old questions like "Who's the third Jackson?" (True story. And it's Marlin, in case you were wondering.) I know things like, crows never die alone, but ask me most any relative's birthday and I'm at a loss. And don't go thinking that I'm a good partner for Trivial Pursuit. That involves actual knowledge. Can I tell you the 36th President? The chemical symbol for magnezium? The dates of the Civil War? Hell no. The names of all the children in "Eight is Enough"? Now, we're talkin'.

So yeah, me and the little kid from Jerry Maguire, somewhere there's a nice institution home for us... Until then if you're at a loss for amusement over gin and tonics or in a heated game of Cranium (Best. Game. Ever.) give me a call.