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Amusement parks reinventing the queue line

I must be a little out of touch with large amusement parks or something. I recently visited Kings Island, which I've been to numerous occasions. Unfortunately, I stumbled directly into Walk-On Weekends, which allows some season pass holders to skip waiting in lines in order to ride the bigger rides almost immediately.

Actually, it's not as bad as I thought. Only the first 1,500 Gold Passholders are eligible, and they receive only a couple of tickets, with scheduled times to ride.

Junk email: from you, to you

I hope you're not one of the many people who has experienced receiving a piece of junk email from (gulp!) yourself.

The good news is that it's probably not your fault. The bad news is someone you know probably has an infected computer.

Many computer viruses going around multiply themselves by grabbing a person's address book and sending emails out to many of the addresses.

Is it wrong to download songs for free from the Internet?

Even though there's a growing number of websites that allow visitors to pay chump change for a song from your favorite artist, many people are still using free sites as their main way to obtain songs.

This question was posed to the Good Advice Committee, which is comprised of five individuals (including me) who well aware of the numerous dilemnas posed by today's technology. The GAC will tackle online ethical situations in upcoming editions.

There are a lot of Doppelgangers out there

More than two years ago, I wrote a column about how people think I look like other people. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you see this), I'm not the only person who experiences this look-a-like problem. Here are some comments:

Olympics start before they begin

I thought the Summer Olympics started Aug. 11, but I visited the official Athens 2004 Olympics site, and it says there are two days until it begins. On the home page, it proceeds to tell me the first soccer (or football outside the U.S.) matches are Aug. 11. How can the Games start before the Olympics start?

Nevertheless, the official site has a lot of options, including a schedule, news, results, biographies and about a billion other things that I left out. I was disappointed, though, at the coverage of synchronized diving.

From the Archive

I'm not the only one looking for ridiculous websites

For Christmas, I received one of those Page-A-Day calendars to keep on your office desk. Normally, when I have one of those, I pull off about two months' worth at the same time because I completely forget about it. And I still do that for the newest one I own, but this one is a little different. This calendar is full of odd and wacky websites, which of course, is great research for my columns. I'll highlight some of my favorites here, and try to give a little bit of info when necessary.

Book review: "The War for Wealth" by Gabor Steingart

If you follow the news at all (assuming you are human), you have probably thought a time or two about the economy in which you live. In the U.S., the economy has a feeling of bleakness for some, stagnation for others and, for all of the non-humans out there, a place to find bizarre fashion trends that come around multiple times (plaid shorts and poofy hair, for example).

How about a new article

It has been way too long since I added an article and upgraded my site. On the heels of returning from Drupalcon Chicago, I'm looking forward to trying to keep up with the latest and greatest options in Drupal these days. I have been rapidly building new sites at my new gig over at the University of Maryland. At least one of my daughters has taken a mild interest in programming, so maybe I can eventually get her to add some items on the site!

March Madness indeed

I typically don't use my website to profess my obsession with University of Louisville sports. But the end of the 2012 season is worth documenting, not only for me, but for the ridiculousness (Russdiculous?) involved.

In January, there was some discussion about attending the Big East Tournament. My stepdad, who splits time between Texas and Louisville, would already be there; my mom, who lives in Louisville, was assuredly going; my brother, who lives in Los Angeles, wanted to check it out; and my uncle, who was overseas until March, was considering as well.

New books are in the warehouse

The third printing of "The Developers" is now at Biblio Distribution, and will be ready shortly to send out to bookstores and libraries across the country. Over the next few months, I will continue to make marketing pushes in the region, as well as other places in the U.S., to promote my book. Be sure to stay tuned to this site for special promotions with my book and other items in the future.

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