Have you ever played ScrabbleÆ online? There's a yahoo game called "Literatiô". It's just like Scrabble. And it's fun when you play someone online and both of you use the Scrabble WordFinder. At first you might say that is cheating, but it really makes for a more strategic game and some really awesome words!

(this was originally posted as a comment on Angie's blog)

Does anyone know of any places that link to well-designed websites?

Here's a starting list:
http://www.designinteract.com/sow
http://www.howdesign.com/links/designfirms.asp
http://www.linkdup.com
http://www.coolhomepages.com
http://www.moluv.com

Please post any additional links in the comments below. Thanks.

Some observations about how the tickets sold. These is based soley on the Chicago Cubs website when they state "Tickets to the following games are no longer available or have scattered single seats." To make this simple, I'm merely calling this "sold out."

1. August or September?
An odd thing is that August games sell out before September games. (After 8 hours, four August games sold out versus two September games.) With a great team on the field as the Cubs have, you'd think that people would want to go see the last games of the season in September. But perhaps people are afraid of the colder weather in September.

2. Saturday or Sunday?
In a fri/sat/sun series, Saturday and Sunday would obviously sell out first. But of Saturday and Sunday which sell out first? It seems Saturday has the slight edge. As both Sat Aug 13 and Sun Sep 17 vs the cardinals sold out before their sunday counterparts. Another weird thing happened with this Sat, Aug 13th date...

3. Sold out statement retracted
The Cubs website said that a couple games were sold out only to bizarrely have them reappear again later.
One of the first games to "sell out" was Sat, Aug 13 vs. the Cardinals. But then the following day, tickets were mysteriously available again. Perhaps even more odd was how Tuesday's game agains the Reds was one of the first 12 games to sell out. Tuesday? Reds? But then just two hours later, tickets were available again. What's happening at the Wrigley box office? Are they witholding tickets and then suddenly deciding to release them again?

For the past seven seasons the Chicago Cubs are 1-7 for their season opener game. The one win came in 2003.

But in their total history since 1876, they have won 57.3% of their opening day games

Longest season opening game winning streak:
8 seasons: 1915-1922

Longest season opening game losing streak:
4 seasons: 1946-1949, 1991-1994, 1999-2002

Sources:
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/opening_day/odschedule.php?t=CHN
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/opening_day/charts/NL_opening_day_games.shtml

Does anyone use the bebo address book system? You can send out a request to all your friends that you are updating your address book. Your friends go to a unique URL and enter their contact details. Once they enter their contact details, they become part of the system. So if anyone in your network updates their address, you will be automatically notified. And if you update your address, all your friends will see your new information. A nice system to keep things up to date.

Here's my address if you wish to add me to your bebo list: I DELETED THE URL.

After reading the comments on this post, i've decided to leave bebo. I highly recommend everyone else does also.

Inspired by the link about the difference between a road, boulevard, etc; I put together a list of all the possible names for a street:
ï alley
ï artery
ï avenue
ï boulevard
ï byway
ï canal
ï channel
ï circle
ï corridor
ï course
ï court
ï cove
ï crescent
ï crossing
ï dale
ï dead end
ï drag
ï drive
ï egress
ï entrance
ï entry
ï estate
ï exit
ï extension
ï freeway
ï gangway
ï gardens
ï gate
ï grove
ï hallway
ï heights
ï highway
ï ingress
ï interstate
ï lake
ï landing
ï lane
ï loop
ï main drag
ï main line
ï opening
ï outlet
ï passage
ï pavement
ï park
ï parkway
ï path
ï place
ï plaza
ï point
ï promenade
ï ridge
ï road
ï roadway
ï route
ï row
ï sewer
ï skyway
ï street
ï stroll
ï superhighway
ï terrace
ï thoroughfare
ï toll road
ï tollway
ï turnpike
ï trace
ï track
ï trail
ï tube
ï turf
ï village
ï walk
ï way
Do you have any more to add to the list. Please add them in the comments.

One exclamation point said to the other, "HELLO!" Exclamation parties are always loud.

The periods always call the cops on them and say, "we want the noise to stop. now."

Commas are like, "well, it can certainly continue some more"

The semicolons say, "i think it can take short pause"

Question marks ask, "when do you think it will end? do you think it's too loud?

Does anyone know of a program that can make sitemaps?
For more details, please click on "comments" below.

Former A-TEAM star MR T has found a new purpose in life preaching Bible
sermons on TV.

The former pro-wrestler - real name LAURENCE TUREAUD - scored global fame as
BOSCO 'BA' BARACUS in the hit 80s TV show about a team of crime fighting
Vietnam veterans.

But the 52-year-old actor has now turned his attention to fighting evil by
preaching on America's TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK every Sunday.

source: contactmusic.com

I just got xbox live a week or so ago.
My username is: MegaSquirrel.
I have Crimson Skies. I'm looking to get 2005 All-Star Baseball and Atari Anthology. I hope that the Anthology game lets you play Combat over the network. All the reviews say is that there is an online scoreboard.

Does anyone else have xbox live? If so, what's your username, and what live games do you have?

Here is the most complete list you will ever find for Design Competitions, Awards, and Deadlines. Over 56 competitions to make you happy (or sad). Here's the link for the full list: http://www.spudart.org/blogs/randomthoughts_comments/2795_0_3_0_C/

UPS has those commercials, "What Brown Can Do For You" trying to make "brown" and "UPS" synonymous. However, a google search for "brown" only lists a UPS reference until result #566! haha. in your face UPS. Brown is so not your color.

"He certainly has a certain style for certain."
-Matt Maldre, in an IM conversation about his brother's artwork.

Amazing that Curt Shilling's blood-stained sock is now in the hall of fame. It's a testament to this pitcher's courage. Here's some tshirts being sold about it: The Real Red Sock


ï Red Sox red sock enters Hall of Fame: UK Reuters
ï Schilling's Bloody Sock Enshrined at Hall: AP
ï Schilling's famous sock heads to Hall of Fame: USA Today
ï Put a sock in it: Washington Post
ï Hall enshrines Schillingís bloody sock: MSNBC
ï Hall of Fame gets a real red sock: Capital News 9

A letter I sent to the Chicago Transit Authority yesterday.
========
Dear CTA Customer Service,

I'm writing to let you know that I appreciate what your customer service did for me on the phone today. My monthly CTA Chicago Card Plus card cracked today while using it on the card reader at the brown line Western stop. I was disappointed having to pay $5 for the replacement and having to pay for all my rides while I wait to get a new card in the mail.

But your customer service was very kind and understanding about it. As they are sending me a 3-day pass as well as my new card. Although I'm still paying $5 for the new card and I think will take longer than three days to get my new card, it's the very act of them actually giving me something extra and compensatory is what's important. Thank you for your kind considerations.

Matt Maldre

Whenever I see a concrete truck, I always imagine that it's going somewhere on a mission to fulfill concrete needs. Someone hauling around fresh spinning concrete could never be going on a joy ride for lunch. Have you ever seen a concrete truck at a McDonalds or a diner? I bet not.

Onward concrete trucks! Good luck with your mission!

Many happy wishes to Tom Saaristo on this his day of birth.

I'm looking for a program or plug-in that will let me combine several print jobs into one print job.

i.e. Let's say I have four different articles on different webpages I want to print. Why waste paper printing them out individually? I want to combine them into one job, so they can print like 4up on one sheet.

Whenever I go to the washroom, I have to first spit out my gum. You know how when you smell something it's because there are microscopic particles of that smell floating in the air that enter your nose and mouth? Well, if those particles are entering my mouth, I don't want my gum to become a resevoir of human waste, so i always spit my gum out first. Does anybody else do this too?

Is there a website that ranks all the animals in certain areas of ability?
i.e.:
ï Strength
ï Intelligence
ï Speed

Of course, animals are different sizes, so are two different ways of looking at this. Absolute or relative.

Let's compare an ant with a elephant.

At their real absolute size, the ant is very very weak, and the elephant is very strong.

But at their relative size, an ant is able to carry 50 times it's weight, while an elephant is only able to carry 25% of its weight.

ï Rhinoceros beetle: 85 times its weight
ï Ant: 50 times its weight
ï Humans: about 1 times its weight
ï Camel: 50% its weight
ï Elephant: 25% its weight

But anyhow, i'm wondering if there is a site that ranks animals abilities. I'm open to either relative or absolute forms of comparison.

Craigslist has been around for quite awhile, but it wasn't until recently that I realized its power as a online classifieds bulletin board. I'm a member of a book club and we regularly get one or two new members every month from craigslist!

And doing a search on craigslist will get you results for any events or items related to your interests. For example, search "tournament" and you'll get a several postings for different tournaments forming around Chicago (or you can search many other large cities in the world.)

You can even search for obscure interests in your area. Like interested in badminton in Chicago? Or how about origami in Chicago? You might find something at craigslist! Coming back to search on your topic every month can be tiresome. But it's really nice that they offer RSS for your search, so you can be notified for when an obscure interest of yours pops up in your area. I have this on my watch list for Chicago:
ï atari
ï badminton
ï board games
ï book club
ï croquet
ï ddr
ï duel masters
ï lutheran
ï monster trucks
ï nerf
ï origami
ï paper airplanes
ï rock paper scissors
ï tournament
ï transformers

How do you do it?
1) Go to Craigslist.com and do a search for your interest.
2) If if there are no results, you will still need to do this: At the bottom of the results page will be an orange box that says "RSS." Click on that.
3) On the new page that shows up, there will be lots of weird code and text. All you need is the URL. Copy the URL and put it into your RSS reader. Don't have a RSS reader?...
4) If you don't have an RSS reader, you can get one here: http://blogspace.com/rss/readers
Personally, I prefer Shrook.

These RSS readers are a program you can download to your computer and it will automatically check websites for you and see if there is an update. You can have many many websites being checked for you all in one place. And the program works much like email. In your RSS reader you'll get a message with a subject line from a website that has been updated. You click on the subject line and part of the body will appear. If you want to read the entire body, just click on the link, and it will take you to your website.

It's so handy. Why check 100 websites a day? You can plunk them into one reader and have the RSS reader check them all for you!

Has anyone ever received real popped edible popcorn as shipping protection in a mailing?

Entrepeneur Magazine states this in their Shipping and Handling Essentials:

Use shredded newspaper or actual (unbuttered!) popcorn instead of Styrofoam peanuts. Your customers will appreciate your concern for the environment, and if you get hungry while packing, you can eat your materials!

Overture has a great search engine tool that tells you how many searches were done for any word you enter: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
So I put together a list of 151 animals and plunked them into the system.

Quite surprisingly, cow was number one by far!

Here's the top ten animals searched online:
1,836,673 Cow
876,600 Dog
867,274 Cat
551,964 Horse
264,312 Wolf
239,099 Eagle
235,440 Dragon
231,533 Fox
185,986 Tiger
185,986 Weasel

And the lowest ten animals searched online:
3,109 Cockatoo
3,109 Grasshopper
2,026 Porcupine
1,809 Newt
1,779 Porpoise
1,569 Squid
1,276 Cobra
1,217 Anemone
526 Cicada
27 Condor

Ever wonder where people sell your name to when you fill out a request form or profile form online?
Here's a trick that I do: When filling in your first name put something unique after your name.
i.e. my full name is Matt Maldre.
So when i fill out forms I may put in "Matt Groovy" for the first name. So now whenever I get junk mail, if it's got "Matt Groovy Maldre" in the address, I know where they got my name from.

Any word will do. Just keep track of what words you use for what.

Here's some recent examples I've done:

Matt Paperlover Maldre: Request for Domtar paper swatches.
Matt Peppy Maldre: Dr. Pepper
Matt Awakenow Maldre: Coca-cola
Matt Newsboy Maldre: Chicago Tribune