The winter that winter forgot

A few patches of snow are hanging on bravely against the rains and overwarm temperatures. We still need a fire in the stove during the night, but will let it burn out during the day. This is nice early April weather. The birds don't come to feeders as much because the berries and seeds are easily found in the woods.

I played a lot of chess in high school, at lunch, after school, on the weekends. I wasn't very good. I was, shall we say, sitting on the far left side of the bell curve. So, when article titled, "Playing Chess May Relief Symptoms of Depression (sic)," I'll read it, but with low expectations.

eBay is offering a few cherished pieces of modern culture, a two-page autobiographical fact sheet by Britney Spears and a empty Diet Pepsi that Ashely Simpson used.

Having a credit card rejected is embarrassing alright. Tell it to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, now-gazillionaire co-founders of Google. They had a card bounce at a dinner in Scotland.

Fiat and Microsoft have launched a new program, called Blue & Me. It's an unfortunate title. Blue has the connotations of Blue Screen of Death, aka BSOD, the colorful screen that Windows puts up when it crashes. Adding BSOD to the car whose name is an acronym for "Fix it again, Tony." is, well, you get the idea.

Is it them or is it me? According to this research, I, a regular iTunes user, should be a teenaged boy, drinking hard cider, driving a Volkswagen, and watching Cartoon Network. I do confess that I check in on SpongeBob and Boondocks every once in a while, but my favorite Volkswagens were 30 or 40 years ago and I never liked hard cider. Either I'm not me or I'm not them. The full report is here, in PDF.