From the “it wuz bound 2 happn lolol!!!11” department: Instant messaging impacts kids’ grammar. And note that, as little as I post here lately, I still do so in complete sentences with correct punctuation and with no pointless abbreviations. 😉

I used to believe, back in kindergarten, that “habit” and “habitat” meant the same thing. I used to believe when I was a toddler that all TV shows were filmed in the local station’s studio (illogical as I realized that premise was!). I used to believe that “brat” was a dirty word. What did you use to believe?

A superhero for the attention-deficit crowd: it’s Captain Distraction!

Via Need To Know, here’s a very Wired definition of irony.

Woohoo. The Mercer Glaciers, my team, came in second place in the undergraduate division and 18th overall in the ACM Southeastern Regionals. Not bad for a bunch of programming-team newbies, eh?

Heh. Looking through the server logs again, I notice that someone hit my site by searching for ice skating rink in spanish on Google. Zone38 was the first link, in fact, but I doubt this Babelfish mangling was of any help…

Tonight I’ll be heading off to Daytona Beach for the Southeastern Regional of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition. I’m planning on bringing my laptop with me, so hopefully I’ll be able to post some blog entries about the competition while I’m there…wish me luck!

Heh. It’s time for another round of interesting search requests…

• A Polish Google user came across my site by searching for another world cody— an unusual search until you realize that “Another World” is the title of a video game and “cody” is not only my name but also the Polish word for “codes”. What’s especially amusing is that, in my younger years, I used to be able to remember tons of obscure video game cheats; go figure.
• Several more searches for that perennial Dave Barry line, “There’s a weasel chomping on my privates“– one of which traces to an IP address in Japan, no less.
• Connection is dropped at random times while connected – Yes, I had used all these words on my blog about a week ago. Just not in any sort of order.
• “super marion bros” – Hey, I’ll admit that it’s a pretty easy typo to make, since even Nintendo Power was guilty of it…
• “proofreading” +carrot – I wonder whether this is a really bad pun, a typo on “caret”, or a reference to the perpetually amusing Song of Carrot Game. Or perhaps all three.
• And finally: usage of oneth in a sentence. My advice? Don’t.

I just saw a banner ad which promoted a scheduling service with the slogan “event calendaring made simple”. Am I the only one out there who thinks “calendar” just shouldn’t be used as a verb?

John C. Dvorak’s recent PC Magazine column on the recording industry’s price-fixing is very well worth the read. Now if only the music industry would do something logical and sensible for once…