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I’m very happy to say ‘Bye Bye’ to Times New Roman as the current standard. I just get tired of looking at the same old font and practically beg people to change the font to something else. I usually recommend ‘Arial’. The new default ‘Calibri’ looks pretty nice as do the other new fonts that will be included.

On another note, I’ve recently added Google ads to my site. This isn’t an attempt to make money because I really don’t get enough traffic for that. It’s more of an experiment just to get familiar with some online advertising practices. Just checking out the competition . It’s also interesting to see what kind of ads appear on my site.

My family went out for breakfast today to celebrate Mother’s Day and then I got dragged to Sears because they had a sale on kitchen pots. I was supposed to look into some reputable Lagostina ones but none of them really appealed to me. I ventured further into the kitchen section and found these killer ergonomic pots.

They look so elegant and they are really user-friendly. Besides the unique handle design (I think they look like raindrops) they also incorporate a beek so you can pour out liquids accurately. The lids even have those little stainer holes so that you can keep the solids in the pot. The silicone handles can also go in the oven. The collection is called Arc42 by Heritage. I can’t wait to try them out! I was so excited when I bought them, I even got a matching toaster-oven and kettle. I looove stainless steel.

For years I’ve been dreaming of a time when I would be free of “stuff”. Sure, having everything can be useful, (Who do You ask when you want to borrow something?) but unless there’s a real clear order for everything, it’s just wasting space in your life. When you ask yourself “Where did I put that?” too often, you should understand that you have a problem. There’s a nice survey here to determine your Clutter Quotient. My favorite part was:

6. Your Acquiring Habits
You see something shiny. You buy it. Then you buy another for a spare, in case the first shiny thing gets dull. You cram both into your home, where you have hundreds of other once-shiny things, all of which are now dull, but you promise yourself to polish them one day. You buy polish.

This quote pretty much defines what I’ve had to put up with over the years. It’s not only one person’s fault, it’s really everyone wanting to hold on to their stuff and seing theirs as more valuable than what others want to keep. To pinpoint more specifically, I see two problems:

• Emotional attachment to objects: Throwing away needs to be Okay! Stop looking at me like I’m commiting a sin because I suggest that it’s time to get rid of the 20 year old alarm clock because the tape deck doesn’t work and it’s door is being kept shut with scotch tape.


• The blame game: Alice wants to throw something out that belongs to Bob, Bob says Carol is taking up too much room, and Carol says both Alice and Bob keep more useless things than she does.

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Isn’t this great news to hear when you finished school yesterday? Yup.

The statistics and all the ratings can be found here.

Only a few projects and exams stand between me and freedom! I can’t wait!

Kathy Sierra, one of CUSEC 2006 keynotes, and in many people’s opinion, the BEST keynote EVER recently made a post about CUSEC and how we ran a great conference and that she would like to see more of the passion she saw at the conference. I’m so proud! Another thing is that there’s a picture of the CUSEC organising team. Yeah! The Concordia Journal also wrote an article about the conference. I was interviewed in that one, see the Concordia software conference grows article.

I’ve started to read Kathy’s blog regularly. Right now, I’m taking a moment to remember what this moment feels like and will try to remember it when things don’t look so good. Thanks Kathy!