Marco posted a great article on his Google Plus, Why Don't Young Americans Buy Cars?

Great stats:
It's true. Our youth is seeing that we all don't need to own cars.

less than half of potential drivers age 19 or younger had a license in 2008, down from nearly two-thirds in 1998.

adults between the ages of 21 and 34 buy just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, a far cry from the peak of 38 percent in 1985.

Good reasoning:
It's nice to hear that the younger generation is smarting up and not caving into our cutural pressures of the car in a driveway.

How can you buy a home when you're underemployed and saddled with student debt? Why would you want to after the horror of the collapsing housing bubble?

Stupid automakers:
Oh yeah! Crap your pants, automakers!

Of course, Millennials are more likely than past generations to live in an urban community, and this may be part of what terrifies car markers.

GM is hoping that the right car, at the right price, can solve these challenges.

That last quote makes me want to say eff you, GM. They think they can manipulate us. That it's a given that everyone buys a car. I cannot stand the notion that every American HAS to own a car.

I should memorize my credit card number, but I'm afraid of doing so in case I get kidnapped and they try to torture the number out of me.

I think about it almost every time I enter in my credit card number. I think first: I should memorize my number, so i don't have to take my wallet out. Then i think: but what if i'm kidnapped? And then they want my credit card number? I don't my kidnappers to get my credit card number.

word:
gomo

definition:
When you are too tired to say the full "good morning."

example:
gomo. i need my coffee

tags:
good morning, greeting, morning, short, bonjour, buenos dias, good morrow, greetings

Birds have cars.
Flying cars.
They are invisible flying cars.
We just can't see their cars. but that's how birds can fly.
Yup.

Birds leave their invisible cars parked around everywhere.
They just hop into one and fly off.
They park them in trees and on electrical wires.
The cars have a hook, that's how they are able to park their invisible cars on wires.

Sometimes the birds leave the invisibilty switch off, and that's when we see what we think are shoes hanging from wires.
But those are actually bird cars

And their cars get rid of the "fuel" and let it drop to earth, right? beautifying the ground with the polluted fuel.
Yeah. their car exhaust is that white stuff.

-- poem by Matt and Sarah

On your next birthday, you should walk around your house/apartment/condo the number of years old you are. On my birthday I will walk around my apartment building 37 times. The gates will make it a little challenging, but that's part of the fun. In fact, some of the orbits I will do a parkour leap style over the gate.

Walking around your residence repeatedly on your birthday would probably lead to some interesting insights.

Donuts? Bring them on. Hot dogs. More please. I just took my cholesterol test, so now I feel like I can cheat a little and have some bad cholesterol food. I'm in that magic moment where I took the test, but I don't know the results yet. If I knew the results, then I probably would not want to eat the hot dogs and donuts.

But as long as I'm in ignorance bliss, let's pig out.

Changing your book format preference from hardcover/paperback to Kindle



Amazon wish lists are great. See something you like? Just add it to your wish list. It's not only handy list for yourself, but your friends and family will appreciate having a list of books you are interested in. And if your family is the type that doesn't like buying something off a list, then your wish list is great research into the types of books you like.

You can even add Kindle books to your wish list. Right now almost all 200 of my books on my wish list are the print edition. I'm looking for a way to easily change the format of all my books on my wish list to the Kindle version.

I sent Amazon an email using their contact form:

I have a question about Amazon wish list and changing my book preference to the Kindle. I have about 200+ books on my Amazon wish list. Almost all of them are paperbacks or hardcoverss. I'm assuming that about one-third or one-half of those are now available as Kindle versions.

My question I would like answered is: Is there an easy way of converting all my books on my Amazon wish list over to the Kindle version (where the Kindle version is available)?

Right now I went back to about 10 books and added the kindle version and deleted the old paperback/hardcover version. There are several problems with this:

1. I lose the original date added. When I add the Kindle version, it puts the date down as today's date. Often I like to know when I added something to my list. I've had this wish list since at least 2000. Having the date added is very important to me.
2. I lose any notes or priorities. Yes, I could copy and paste the notes and I could assign the same priority. But, really? Do you want your customer to have to do all that work?
3. It's simply too much work to hand-change all my books by re-adding the book in Kindle format, and then going back and deleting the paperback/hardcover. And then also to reassign priorities and notes.

As Amazon is battling the eBook market with other formats, I would think Amazon would want to make it as simple as possible for customers to change their book format preference on their wish list.

Thank you. I would greatly appreciate an answer to how to change the format from print to Kindle.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this?

word:
np

definition:
Short for "nip it in the bud"

example:
person 1: This is totally getting out of hand, I can't stop eating bags and bags of chocolates.
person 2: np

tags:
no problem, abbreviation, acronym, problem, help, control

What do you think is the grossest word in the English language? I'd say "crotch." Just listen to that word. Crotch. Yuck.

I'll never forget when we were playing floor hockey in fifth grade, and someone whipped their stick up my nuts. The gym teacher came over and kept asking me, "how's your crotch? how's your crotch?" All I could think was, "that word is not helping me!"

word:
overload

definition:
When something is so immensely cute, overload encompasses the object that is cute and the feeling of cute. The viewer becomes completely whelmed, thus one's feelings goes on overload. And the object of cuteness is an overload of cute.

example:
1) I am so on overload by this cute puppy! 2) This cute pupppy is so cute overload.

tags:
cute, overload, adorable, beautiful, charming, dainty, delightful, pleasant, pretty, overflowing, abundance, heaps, loads, a lot, tons, immense

Mary Fons has one of the best blogs in the world. Last week she wrote about enjoying sandwiches with Peace on Wheat. You should really read it. Here's my comment on her blog post:

The next best thing to Peace on wheat is 13 on wheat. They cut the sandwich in half, I like to take that a step further and split the sandwich horizontally in half, so it's four open-faced sandwiches. That way I can taste what's IN the sandwich more.

Actually, that's a good tip for all sandwiches and burgers. To open it up and let the single bun be the bottom and let the insides see the sun. Enjoy the inside of the sandwich. Bread is nice, but when it seals the top and bottom, you can't taste the inside as good.

We read the insides of books. We shouldn't let the cover of a sandwich get in the way of good taste.

How do you enjoy a good sandwich? Please leave a comment on Mary's blog post, Peace on Wheat.

If a company with the word "solar" in their name, would they have issues with the recent x-class solar flares? Or would they get inquiries about solar flares? Like, maybe the are behind it or something. If your company is named after the sun, certainly you are in cahoots with the sun in harvesting its powerful energy.

The server that hosts spudart.org and unlikelymoose.com is named Solar VPS. I was thinking about these things as I emailed them earlier this week when a large solar flare was released from the sun. It's especially suspicious that on Solar VPS' website, they have an image of an outer space body with the line "IT'S COMING"

MY SERVER IS IN CAHOOTS WITH THE SUN!

Does anyone know of any chicago-related playlists on youtube/vimeo of short films done by Chicagoans? or even films about chicago?

I also asked this question on Chicago Magazine's Google Plus.

word:
weekstart

definition:
The start of the work week. Typically Monday. People say "have a happy weekend" on Fridays. On Mondays people greet each other with a happy weekstart.

example:
It's Monday, happy weekstart!

tags:
monday, time, day, week, weekend, beginning, start

first usage:
In a sticky note comics post

Do you find it hard to read on a Kindle or iPad, because you are easily distracted? Read my debate with author Marco Buscaglia on my syndication blog at mattmaldre.wordpress.com.

Dear Google,
You are fantastic, but can you seriously chill out on siphoning bandwidth from me? On an average day my server dishes out 6 GB of traffic (mostly from spudart.org and some from unlikelymoose.com). But today you have hit me up for 2,616 GB of bandwidth. That's right. Over two thousand gigs off outgoing traffic from google. The main IP addresses hitting my server is 66.249.71.43, from Google.

Ouch.

OMG the cnet person who wrote this article about the Lorax app… her hair looks like a Lorax mustache!