February 08
Catching up with the web
It's funny how being laid up post-oral surgery gives you the time to do things you put off for a long time: reading queued up newspaper articles (speaking of which, my friend Galen made the
New York Times today!), putting away some of the clothes piles that have accumulated, uh, holding a bag of frozen peas to your cheek...and best of all, catching up on various places of editorial output! I haven't written in this blog in months now and it's about time.
Since I've already "toured" Berkeley and Seattle, another fitting destination might be the web, particularly given my bedridden state. A couple of new websites I've discovered in the last several months:
http://www.mint.com. It's a financial management tool that imports your various spending/saving habits, categorizes them, graphs them, generates monthly averages for various habits and then compares them against your prior behavior and that of people across the country. I know the concept of putting your bank account/credit card numbers and passwords into a website sounds rather frightening, but this tool seems to have pages devotedto why it's secure, and I have to say, the things it did with my spending habits without my having to do any work were pretty darn impressive. You'll have to check it out to see for yourself.
http://www.yelp.com. I like to describe it as Wikipedia meets Citysearch, and also the best tool for discovering fantastic places to go (especially to eat) in most major US cities, and some other places, too. If you've talked to me at all in the time since December you'll know that I went through a several week stint where Yelp was my obsession for life. I talked of, dreamed of, thought of, did nothing of anything else while I generated 30-something reviews to get my foot in the Elite door. (You can check out my reviews at
http://stepht.yelp.com, if you're interested in where I've been eating--slash, be my friend!). Word to the wise, get on writing some reviews and make Elite!
OK, it's time to refresh my Advil dosage and consume some more liquid foods...til the next entry!
Tools 
