Seek The Substantial

Some of you may have seen the del.icio.us link on the right of this blog and wondered what the heck it is. For someone like myself, it is absolute and complete greatness, del.icio.us is social bookmarking. Basically, I have a personalized page that allows me to, wherever I am located, to bookmark to my del.icio.us page instead having to simply list it on my favorites on my home computer. I know that this seems a little odd, but the other nice thing about del.icio.us is that it allows to “tag” a website (i.e. assign a word to a website that helps define it) and then I am able to view what other folks are bookmarking and using the same tag. del.icio.us is easy to use and very enjoyable because it makes life simple.

It should also be noted that Yahoo purchased del.icio.us in early December and that will probably mean changes, but Yahoo also purchased Flickr and it seems like they have done nothing but great things with it.

I have been fascinated by finding web-based websites that contain useful stuff. In this post I examine the web-based calendar. Now, some of you may not know what “web-based” means, but basically, as opposed to having a calendar system on your computer, you can take your calendar wherever you have an internet connection by simply logging onto that website.

The best web-based calendar is kiko. The format is simple and clean and it’s easy to work. It also allows you to invite friends and they can look over what’s you want them to view as far as your calendar is concerned.

The other calendar is called calendarhub. Once again, simple is good and it allows you to do all of the things that kiko does, but for some reason I like the kiko interface better. Looking at it objectively, calendarhub allows you to do more, like publish your calendar to your blog and allows you to look for local events in the area.

Both are good strong calendar systems and I recommend them both. Also, it’s free, and there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting this stuff is that there’s no real reason to pay for anything because you can get it free (Miranda will strongly disagree with me, but its true).

The annual Kaufman Christmas party was a huge success. There’s nothing like celebrating baby Jesus’ birth by exchanging sexually themed gag gifts. A good time was had by all, and for the record the ladies won at Pictionary, barely.

Please note, that the Kaufman crew was with Jim, Buddy and Rick. It says more about us than it does about them (i.e. we act as old as they are).

So the funny part is that we go to a very trendy bar in Dallas, called “The Fuse” and to say the least, we (we being J-Five, Tony, Chris, Stephen, Greg and myself) were the most out of place folks and to be quite honest the homosexual population at this bar outweighed the heterosexual population (not that there’s anything wrong with that). So we end up leaving there and we go to another bar across the street. This was the type of bar that no one knows about and we went through some canvas cover to get inside. Inside, there were more pretty people than you could shake a stick at and we felt even more out of place. We were enjoying ourselves here and a manager comes up to Chris and tells him that someone at the front told us to take off our hats (which he did not) or leave. We told him that we would leave, but he was really a jerk about the whole situation. Nevertheless, we laughed and giggled our way out of the bar and into the parking lot.

Nothing like a bachelor party at the AAC, we have Greggo getting his bounce “on” prior to the game, you have myself and Chris showing a sense of apathy during the game and a look at tip-off. In actuality, it was a pretty good game, but it shouldn’t have been. As Chris said, he cannot remember the times that Dirk has hit a game-winning shot (and he missed one tonight to send it into OT). Jason Terry and Devin Harris are unbelievable, as is Josh Howard. DJ “Moose” Benga actually got into the game due to the ineffectiveness of Damp and Diop and he showed some athleticism.

But the game really isn’t the story here. We all had a good time at the game, but with 4 minutes left to go, two guys showed up and told Greg and Stephen that they were in their seats. As Greg left, he gave one of them then turkey-wing brush-off, but the guy had already done his job and Greg was affected. He later proceeded to curse at an Adrian Griffin foul without issuing the warning of ear-muffs.

After we left the game, we headed to a swanky bar downtown and then the real party began.

My sweet clean buddy, Greggo, discussed the idea that panda bears may actually be related to raccoons. I laughed at the idea, but I did not laugh enough not to find out if this is accurate. Strangely enough, I found this on Wikipedia:

“For many decades the precise taxonomic classification of the panda was under debate as both the Giant Panda and the distantly related Red Panda share characteristics of both bears and raccoons. However, genetic testing has revealed that Giant Pandas are true bears and part of the Ursidae family. Its closest bear relative is the Spectacled Bear of South America. (Disagreement remains about whether or not the Red Panda belongs in Ursidae; the raccoon family, Procyonidae; or in its own family, Ailuridae.)”

I know that this may shock some of you, but Greggo was/is right.

I am going to a Maverick game tomorrow night and it should be quite a time. There will be pictures on Saturday.

Someone, I think Richie, mentioned on Sunday that he was wasting quite a bit of time playing online games. Thus, it was my mission to find a complete list of free games that were online, ranging from, well, everything. Some of these games cost money down the road, but live for today and play.

On another note, I’ve “discovered” web 2.0 and all of the applications that it can have. Over the next few weeks I’ll be discussing many of the web 2.0 websites and what they can do for you, i.e. make your life easier and more fun.