It's fun searching my address book by first name, because I can see how many people I know with a a particular first name. Here's the most popular in my address book:

8 Amy
7 Jennifer
7 Lisa
7 Tim
6 Peter
5 Jason
5 Mary
5 Sarah

I did it by exporting my yahoo address book into a csv file, copy the first name column, paste it into a field on this word frequency indexer.

When something costs ten dollars, the cool person will say, "That jive cost me a hamilton." Or even, "it bust me out a hammy."

If something costs sixteen dollars, that would be called a "Hamilington" (for Hamilton, Lincoln, Washington)

Twenty-three dollars is a Jackingtontonton. Note the repeated "ton" three times.

The rule is that you always start with the larger denomination and go down. Something that costs seven dollars would never be called a Washwashcoln. Rather it's a Lintonton.

How much do you remember from the books you read? If you're like me, most of the info just kinda disappears. It would be neat to go back through books you've read and pull out five quotes from each book and put it into a list. From now on when I finish a book, I'm gonna pull out five interesting quotes and post it on my blog.

Take your cell phone number. Enter it into a calculator as a set of digits as numbers, and the dashes as a minus sign. At the end of the phone number, hit the enter/equals button.

Let's take Empire carpet's old number:
773-588-2300= -2115
Of course now it has a 1-800 number:
1-800-588-2300= -3687

A few phone factoids. 989 is the highest area code in America. It's for Upper central Michigan (Mt Pleasant, Saginaw). The highest prefix for the 989 area code is 996 given to Verizon Wireless customers. (source.

Computer industry pioneer Steve Wozniak, a collector of phone numbers, obtained the phone number 888-888-8888, but it proved unusable: Children playing with phones would dial it, resulting in more than a hundred wrong numbers a day. (via wikipedia)

(photo courtesy of reiscakes via creative commons)

My away message for work on December 25:

=============
I'm out of the office Monday and Tuesday, December 25 and 26. Between the years 800-1200 AD, many kings were crowned on December 25th:

--December 25, 1130 King of Sicily crowned (Roger II) by Anti-pope Anacletus II
--December 25, 1100 King of Jerusalem crowned (Boudouin I of Boulogne)
--December 25, 1066 King of England crowned (William the Conqueror)
--December 25, 1046 German Emperor crowned (Henry III ) by Pope Clemens VI
--December 25, 1000 King of Hungary crowned (Monarch Istvan)
--December 25, 969 Emperor of Byzantium crowed (Johannes I Tzimisces)
--December 25, 967 German Emperor crowned (Otto II) by John XIII
--December 25, 875 Emperor of Rome crowned (Charles, the Bare)
--December 25, 800 Empreor of Rome crowned (Charles the Great (Charlemagne)) by Pope Leo III

It's interesting so many nations would choose December 25th to crown their king. Why? Because the true King, Jesus Christ was born on that day.

As it was predicted 700 years before his birth,
"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

Oh, and work stuff. I'm returning back on Wednesday, December 27. If you need immediate assistance, please contact Txxx Rxxxx at 312-xxx-xxxx, xxxxx@tribune.com
=============

Yesterday we learned that the 19th President of the United States (1877-1881) Rutherford B. Hayes is the least searched-for president online. But now he is my favorite, because he loved to play croquet.

Here's some more trivia about our nineteenth President of the United States (1877-1881):

Hayes won the presidential election by the House's electoral college vote of 185-184, just fifty-six hours before the inauguration was to take place.

His wife, Lucy Webb Hayes, carried out orders from her husband to banish wine and liquor from the White House. Lucy was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and, as such served nothing stronger than lemonade at State Dinners. Her nickname was “Lemonade Lucy.”

Lucy Webb Hayes was the first wife of a president to be known as the “First Lady.”

Hayes signed a bill that made it possible for women lawyers to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rutherford B. Hayes allowed the first Egg Roll on the White House lawn.

Starting in 2007 the US Mint will be featuring presidents on the dollar coins. Every year four presidents will be featured in the order they took office.

Which president is the least searched-for? I went to overture's keyword selector tool that tells us how many times a term has been searched. Here's the result for the United States presidents:

Rutherford B. Hayes: 1,583
Chester A. Arthur: 1,923
Benjamin Harrison: 2,064
Warren G. Harding: 2,119
Millard Fillmore: 2,506
James K. Polk: 2,643
James Buchanan: 2,688
William Henry Harrison: 2,840
William H. Taft: 2,979
William McKinley: 3,091

James Garfield: 3,154
Grover Cleveland: 3,583
John Tyler: 3,593
Martin Van Buren: 3,672
Calvin Coolidge: 3,705
Zachary Taylor: 3,859
Harry S Truman: 4,001
Dwight Eisenhower: 4,016
Lyndon B. Johnson: 4,204
Franklin Pierce: 4,491

Herbert Hoover: 4,962
James Monroe: 5,089
Andrew Johnson: 5,135
John Quincy Adams: 5,480
Ulysses S. Grant: 7,336
Gerald Ford: 7,860
Woodrow Wilson: 10,177
Richard Nixon: 10,207
James Madison: 15,501
Franklin D. Roosevelt: 15,629

Jimmy Carter: 18,906
Andrew Jackson: 19,033
Theodore Roosevelt: 25,255
Ronald Reagan: 33,477
John F. Kennedy: 35,864
John Adams: 43,827
Thomas Jefferson: 46,582
George W. Bush: 56,158
Bill Clinton: 60,091
George Washington: 62,105
Abraham Lincoln: 65,778

Poor Rutherford B. Hayes. Least popular president. He's my favorite. He loved to play croquet. More about Rutherford tomorrow!

Every year in early May and early september there are wiffleball tournaments in Sycamore, Illinois. Buttermaker informed me about these tournaments through a funny message on 43people.com

===============
I have not met Matt yet but I can tell he is a wiffleballer. I don’t think he will come close to hitting any of my pitches.
He has never seen “THE DEATH STAR” pitch.
He won’t have any idea what to do with “THE MATRIX” pitch.
“THE FIZZY LIFTER” will baffle him.
When I thorw him “THE STRING THEORY”, what will he possibly do with it?
And last but not least, what will he even think of doing with “THE TIGHTY WHITEY”?
I hope he gets a couple of teams together and comes out to our wiffleball tournaments, west of the Chicago area.
www.waylacwiffleball.com
===============

Does anyone think they can hit the Death Star, Matrix, Fizzy Lifter, String Theory, or Tighty Whitey pitches? I'm thinking that I can be like Luke Skywalker and destroy the Death Star. I can be like Neo and dodge all the Matrix attempts. But the other three will just baffle me.

It sounds like a fun tournament, anyone want to participate in them next year? I'm game. Let's destroy some Death Stars!

(Image courtesy bug138)

My away message for work:

I'm out of the office Monday and Tuesday, December 18 and 19 as December 18th is International Test your Nuclear Weapons Day (btw, i'm not serious).

But what is serious is that December 18th in history has been a day that countries have truly tested their nuclear weapons.
--December 18, 1978 France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
--December 18, 1978 U.S.S.R. performs underground nuclear test
--December 18, 1970 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
--December 18, 1969 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
--December 18, 1968 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk U.S.S.R.
--December 18, 1966 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk U.S.S.R.
--December 18, 1964 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
--December 18, 1962 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya U.S.S.R.

On this day let's pray for a safer world.

I'm returning back to work on Wednesday, December 20. If you need immediate assistance, please contact Todd Rector at 312/xxx-xxxx, xxxxxx@xxxxx.com.

(Photo courtesy of Jurica)
If i had a dog, i would give him an email address. People could email my dog and then i would read the email to him. I'm thinking about giving my pet rock an email address. He can roll across the keyboard pretty good. Here, watch...

/.,mlnkhjgbrfy

I don't know what that means in pet rock-ese, but he rolled from the bottom right to the top left. In a northwesternly manner.

The most errors in one season was accomplished by shortstop Billy Shindle of the 1890 Philadelphia Quakers. He bobbled the ball 119 times in one season. At least he was 2nd in the league with 182 hits. Billy was a DH before its time.

But bad fielding was part of the game back then. Here's the most errors committed for one season for each decade.

Notice how there's less errors for each decade? That's cuz they stopped putting pine tar in their ear. No, just better gloves and better fields.

It cracks me up how Jose Valentin has committed the most errors for one season in the 2000's.

What is the plural of childhood? Childhoods? That sounds weird. The plural of child is children. How about the plural of childhood to be childhoodren?

One of the great avenues of the world is missing something. A red carpet.

Chicago's Magnificent Mile has wonderful shopping, skyscrapers, historic buildings, and even horse carriages. But now imagine a mile long red carpet on the sidewalk. That would be so cool.

Currently there's a little carpet in front of the Hotel Intercontinential's doors on Michigan Avenue. I love walking across it every time I pass by the hotel. In fact, I make a point of walking on the carpet every time I go that direction.

An outdoor sidewalk carpet brings fluffy happy walking to all pedestrians. A mile-long carpet would establish the shopping district as top notch. The term "Magnificient MILE" would come absolutely true with a MILE-long carpet.

Yeah, so the carpet would get worn out every few months. Just replace it. You'll only need 82 sheets of some outdoor carpet and that would cost about $30,000 (without bulk pricing) for a 12-foot wide by one-mile long carpet. The stores along this carpet would more than make up the profits due to the increase of people coming to "walk that famous red carpet."

Tourists would come just to have their photo taken on the red carpet. People already walk up and down Michigan Avenue like it's some sort of fashion catwalk. Now a red carpet only encourages that more.

Every year there could be an official fashion show up and down Michigan Avenue. Let viewers stand on the street and watch the models walk down the red carpet showing off the newest in fashion styles. The stores would love to have their storefront as the backdrop.

Chicago needs a mile-long carpet for its magnificent mile. Let's call Empire today for carpet tomorrow. No Payments until January 2008!

There's plans for a new monster 2,000 foot tall building to appear on the lakefront in Chicago. Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune wrote an excellent review pointing out how the old plan had the tower gracefully pointing upward into the sky with a twisting tapered body and culmanating spire.

Now we have a twisting cylinder that looks like a Twizzler. That's his words, "Twizzler Tower." This should catch on as the unofficial name for the building, much like the "Chicago Picasso" and the "Chicago Bean". So I bought the domain, www.twizzlertower.com.

What is most significant about the before and after designs is that the original design was about verbs--gracefully twisting upward. Now the tower is about a noun. A Twizzler.

(This post is supposed to appear on Tuesday, December 12, but since I mention this in my funny auto-reply email away message at work, i'm posting it earlier)

On this day in December 12, 1930, Major League Baseball changes a rule that a ball bouncing into the stands is no longer a homerun, but now a double. Then on this day in 1949 the American League votes 7-1 rejecting a proposal to legalize the spitball.

What rule should they instate today? How about: If a fly ball hits a fielder on the head before bouncing, the batter is considered out. That would make for some comical highlights. (and then there would be the subsequent rule where fielders cannot wear a batting helmet on the field).

Do you have an idea for a new rule for baseball?

For all you FOX NFL robot hatas out there, be glad it ain't like the NHL robots.

NHL Transformers:


NFL Transformer:


The Fox NFL transformer rules. The first week of football this year I thought it was cool and wondered if I would get sick of him. It's now week 14 and I still enjoy watching him between commericial breaks.

Before books they wrote everything on scrolls. And now with computers, we have come back to the scrolls (scrolling up and down a webpage).

1999 Cows on Parade	2001 Couches	2001-2004 Wacker Drive Construction
2003 Bobbleheads	2004 Mickey Mouse

(Photos courtesy of Vincent Falk)

When Chicago does a public art theme, Vincent Falk photographs himself beside every single sculpture with a matching outfit. Wow. I've always meant to do a catalog of all the public art on display every year, but not only does he photograph it every sculpture, he even wears a matching suit for each piece.

From his condo in Marina Towers he shot the most complete collection of Wacker Drive Construction photos. He broke up the scene into 19 sections and photographed each section once a week. Then he even went out and photographed himself wearing matching suits next to items on the construction scene!

We need more people like Vincent Falk in our world who are bold and have such great initiative.

Let's say you wanted to find all the words that end in "able." The dictionary at onelook.com enables you to do that. Just type in an asterick before your search query. (Note, this will not work on dictionary.com or Cambridge Dictionary. And Merriam-Webster will only give you 10 results).

To find all the words that end in "able", we go to onelook.com com and search for: *able. It will give you 100 results per page. Ok, so that was a lot of results. How about: *ldre? (the last four letters in my last name).

1. Boldre: a village and civil parish in the New Forest district of Hampshire. It is situated outside the New Forest National Park borders, near the River Lymington, and is about 3 miles north of Lymington. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 1,931.

2. huldre: one of a race of Scandinavian sirens, living in the woods, seductive but dangerous.

3. ldre: no meaning

4. Veldre: Veldre is an area of hills climbing from Brumunddal in Norway.

ways to indicate laughter online

acronyms:
lol (laughing out loud)
lawl (pronounciation of lol)
lolol (adds emphasis of lol)
llol (literally laughing out loud)
lolz (gangsta lol)
rofl (rolling on the floor laughing)
roffle (pronounciation of rofl)
lmao (laughing my ass off)
roflmao (combo rofl and lmao)

other pronounciations:
heh (a minor laugh)
haha
bawww-haw-haw-haw (a guffaw)
hee-HAW (hick laugh)
a-HEEEEEEE a-HEEEEEEE a-HEEEEEEE (dork laugh, when you suck in air, instead of letting it out)
*giggle*

emoticons for laughter:
:-D
;-D (winking and laughing)
|-D (big laugh with squinting eyes)
8-D (shocking laugh with big eyeballs)
B-D (laugh with sunglasses)
7:^D (Ronald Regan laughing)
+O:-D (The Pope laughing)
+<||-D (A knight laughing)
*<|:-D (Santa Claus laughing)
:-3D (laughing with a mustache)
O :-D (Angelic laugh)
&-D (crazy laugh)

Can you think of any more acronyms, pronounciations, or emoticons for laughter? If so, please leave them in the comments below.

This fall my kickball team won the league championship! We went undefeated for the entire season therefore making us the undisputed the 2006 kickball champions in Chicago. If you want to dispute it, we dare you to bring the challenge onto the field.

Granted, we won a league that was very poorly organized from Chicago Sports Monster. I would never recommend joining one of their kickball leagues. Next year, we'll probably go with Chicago Sport and Social Club.

Our team name was the ThunderPigs. In the past our kickball team name was the ThunderKats, but then we were signed up in this league as the Sinister Pigs, but we had these shirts already with the super cool logo Cef designed for the ThunderKats. So we merged the two names into ThunderPigs.

Secrets of our success? Before every pitch we would yell out the number of outs and what bases there were forces at. For example, "ONE OUT, FORCE AT FIRST AND SECOND!" Plus we had the vacuum cleaner of a defenseman at third base, Gaspar. That dude caught everything that came near him. Third base is a very pivotal position in kickball, cuz everyone kicks the ball down the third base line.

Back row, left to right: Gaspar, B, Christopher, Cef Grima, Lisa Wells, Matt Maldre, Chris Cobb, Tim Hilleshiem
Front row, left to right: Stephanie Cobb, Colette McNulty, Nicole Ehret, Colleen Joyce, Erin Brumfield, Cecil (the dog)

83 in text messaging means TD or Touchdown. If your team scores a touchdown, you can send an excited text message to a friend that says, "TD TD TD TD TD TD TD TD." All it takes is to hit 8-3-space over and over. I can see it now, 83 will become a VERY popular number to wear on football jerseys.