Recently in Link-o-rama Category

• Articles like this about how a sizeable percentage of Americans stay in contact with their office while on vacation always stun me. I'm going to Alaska in less than three weeks and you can bet I will not be thinking about work at all, much less trying to read my work email or check in with the office.

• I was going to post that if you want to run the Houston Marathon or Half Marathon in January, you need to sign up today. But it's already too late. This morning the website said they were 99% full and sure enough -- they are now sold out. And the event is still more than 6 months away! Unbelievable.

• The Houston Museum of Natural Science is having a Guitar Hero II contest in a couple of weeks as part of their RockFest, which is tied in to their cool gems and minerals exhibit. I'm seriously considering entering. I don't know if I could win, but I could probably hold my own.

• I found this Salon article very interesting. The author talks about public perception of airline pilots as making $150,000 a year for 20 hours per week or work (neither of which is anywhere close to the truth), and about what airlines can do to improve the industry. Airline customer service is awful and should be improved, yet passengers take flying for granted. "If you think there is some terrible injustice in being asked to pay, say, $1,000 to fly halfway around the world, at 600 miles per hour, in a $200 million airplane, in almost absolute safety, you're being unreasonable." I totally agree with everything he says. The author actually writes a regular column about the airline industry that is always a good read.

I can't remember if I ever posted this in the past, but there's a new video out that's making the Internet rounds. So there's this guy, Matt. And he started a website, Where the Hell Is Matt? And he posts videos of himself dancing in various places around the globe. And a company actually sponsored him, so he gets to keep doing it. And now, other people join in too!

I dare you not to smile.

So my sister sent me an email with the subject line of "I got elfed." I expected it to be some funny holiday card, or perhaps a cartoony version of her as an elf, or a photoshopped photo, etc etc. I did not expect to get a Flash movie of my brother-in-law Joel, Jose, my brother David, and me dancing around and shaking our elf booties. It made me laugh really hard.

We got elfed!

Fun with Flickr:

This cracked me up.

I've always been told that I don't really have an accent (though a southern accent will appear for a word or two once in a blue moon). I guess this proves it. Midland accent, another way of saying I don't have one! But the predominant one is southern, which makes sense since I'm from North Carolina. :) (Thanks Joe for the link.)

Two fun links for today, courtesy of Tracy:

+ Pipe Cleaner Dancing Man

+ Lite-Brite

I love Milwaukee's racing sausages. And I love Washington's racing presidents (even though I just found out about them). What we obviously need are more racing characters!

"Houston. Do you go with Astronaut Races? "We have John Glenn in Lane 1, Neil Armstrong in Lane 2, Alan Shepard in Lane 3 and coming out of retirement again in Lane 4, the Rocket Man himself, Roger Clemens." Or Spacecraft Races? "Sputnik went out fast, but Apollo 11 and the Space Shuttle have closed the gap. And it looks like SkyLab is falling out of it." I don't think you could go wrong with either, really."

I'd seen this size comparison of the planets before, but not with other stars included as well. Antares is, like, 200 times bigger than the Sun! Whoa.

Thanks Brian for the link.