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Will be attending the summit. Check it out if you can…humanity needs you…

I deleted my previous post titled “Good Grief Charlie Branaski.” I did this because a site I linked to may have some sort of malware on it. If you get my updates through a RSS reader instead of visiting the actual site, please don’t click the Peanuts link. Sorry ’bout that.

I was introduced to the Talking Moose when I was 16 or 17, putting it right around 1990 or 1991. I loved it and loathed it. The damned thing would interrupt you when you least wanted it but teaching it how to swear more than made up for it’s shortcomings. I only mention the Moose because I was thinking about it. It’s still around, still as annoying as ever and still as lovable, you can find it here. Mac only. The longevity of this thing amazes me.

When I’m online I usually live out of Google Reader. I find it to be much more useful than Bloglines if for no other reason than the sparse interface. I love the minimalist approach that Google uses for their products, less is more and all that. I’ve never really cared about my web-reading statistics but curiosity finally forced me to click on the “trends” link in Google Reader. Here is what the Goog says about me:

From your 132 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 14,742 items, starred 19 items, and shared 0 items.

I guess I read a lot but I don’t like to share…also, I read mostly “science” things, followed by “fun” and finally “web.” This is calculated by something to do with tags. Weird that everything I read falls into only three categories.

I’ve trimmed the number of feeds I read significantly but I still find myself up late at night trying to catch up. What really bothers me though is my lack of sharing. I will work on that in the future and post a link to my shared items when I have some.

Cory Doctorow was in town at Borderlands signing his new book Overclocked: Stories of the future Present. As always, Cory was on top of his game. He is a very bright, engaging, and funny speaker who has an answer for every question posed to him. A good time was had by all.

Here’s a picture that Cassandra took while I was getting my book signed. Pay no attention to the blurriness of Yours Truly, I frequently fidget nervously and rarely, if ever, look human in photographs.

My heart lies with the Bears but my brain says Colts. Put another way, I’m a betting man and if I were to put money on the game it would go with the Colts. So, that’s my prediction. Is there a conflict of interest if you root for one team but bet on another?

The fridge is full of Cokes and Dr. Peppers and there are plenty of potato chips and boxes of cereal to keep my strength up.

Billy Joel is much older-looking than I remember…

Thanks to Ning I have created wordsmith, a social networking site for writers. I still have to figure out how to promote the site and I want to add some additional features as well but I think it’s pretty usable as-is.

This article about Wal-Mart relaxing its shop-lifting policy is old news but for some reason I was thinking about it again tonight.

Living in San Francisco, I see my share of the homeless and the hungry and I’m always thinking of ways to help the poor folks out. I, as many others do, give when I can but it’s never enough. I think the answer lies with Wal-Mart.

According to their site, they serve 175 million customers a week in, I can’t remember, 65 countries I think it was. If they let every one of those customers walk out with $24 worth of food that would be 4.2 billion dollars of food, every week. They are currently saying on their site that they gave $245 million last year for charity, which is a fantastic amount, but I like the sound of 4.2 billion dollars a week. I’m sure my math is off somewhere, I’m no economist after all. I think I used the figure of $24 dollars just to make sure that nobody was getting screwed. But I may have gone with the full $25. I only do math once so it’s hard for me to be sure.

It’s a situation where everyone would win. Nobody gets a record or arrested, Wal-Mart gets to write the expense off as either a loss or charity, and people that cannot afford food will suddenly have food. Sure, there are the logistics of delivering the food, etc. but I’m trying to solve one thing at a time here.

They could even be gentlemanly about the whole thing:

Cashier: So, eh, find everything you need?
Customer: Yep.
Cashier: Did ya steal your allotment?
Customer: No
Cashier: Get out of here you bum and don’t come back until you’ve stolen the proper amount.
Customer: But I only want this pack of gum.
Cashier: I said Good Day Sir.

It would be a good way to teach children the correct methods of stealing – you know, which items to look out for and which items are crap, that sort of thing. No longer would families hang out in the Wal-Mart food court despising each other and thrusting ice picks into necks and bellies, they would be helping to solve World Hunger as well!

I think it is the duty of every American that shops at Wal-Mart to steal $24 worth of food every time they shop and then give that food away to those that need it.

Cassandra Lewis said it best, “Steal a little extra.” And it’s as simple as that, do your normal shopping and then steal a little extra.

So go forth, patriotic Americans, and steal twenty-four bucks. You won’t just be doing it for your country, you’ll be doing it for your soul.