Here's My Stab At It...

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
- Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
- Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
- Star (*) those you plan on reading.
- Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+ (all seven)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible X+
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott *
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X +
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger *
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell *
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X +
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X +
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X +
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X+
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X+
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck *
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas *
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville *
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X+
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce *
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X +
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X +
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X +
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X+
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas *
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo *

Ok, have read (X): 23. If you count all seven Harry Potter books, 29.
Plan to read (*): 12

Hey Lee

They changed it...

people.tribe.net/65fbb88d-...185e2/blog

I almost wish...

I almost wish they would bring back those stupid mortgage ads with the dancing computer generated characters. If you've been on the internet for any length of time, you know the ones I'm talking about. They popped up in banner ads across the top of the page, down the side of the page, and even in the middle of the page. They were almost as annoying as the ones with the videos of the girl dancing in her cubicle, who gets all embarrased when she realizes she's being filmed.

I can only hope these new "Obey one rule" diet ads go away just as quickly.

And I have talked to doctors (the MD kind) who say that you do NOT have old stuff lining the walls of your colon (let alone 25 lbs. of it. Your colon would not be able to function if the walls were coated with sludge). You do not need colon clense, just eat enough fiber and veggies to keep yourself regular, and how is cleaning this stuff out of your colon supposed to take 25 lbs off your tummy or waist anyway?

What Will They Think of Next?

www.bagborroworsteal.com/

The Letter Game

1.What is your name? Phil

2. A 4 Letter Word: Phat

3. A Boys Name: Phillip

4. A Girls name: Phyllis

5. An Occupation: Philanthropist

6. A Color: Purple

7. Something you wear: Pants (If you were expecting "phlip-phlops" sorry. I lost the "ph" thing at purple)

8. A Beverage: Pepsi

9. A Food: Pizza

10. Something found in the bathroom: Paper, toilet

11. A place: Philadelphia

12. A Reason for being late: Procrastination

13. Something you shout: Phooey!

The Saga Continues

Now, you have the ability to work on documents (Word), spreadsheets (Excel), and presentations (PowerPoint) online. You can publish your work as a web page. You can control who can see it. You can collaborate with your friends and peers, and of course, it's free!

Just go to docs.google.com

During the tour (click on the "Take a Tour" link. It's the last item on the bullet list on the left side), they say you can safely store your documents online. With their service your work won't be lost. You don't have to worry about your computer crashing, etc. This is all well and good, however, on the testimonials page of the tour, there is someone who says they store a spreadsheet of items online, so everyone involved in the process of launching a new line of product can accesss the list at the same time. This is very convenient, but it begs the question: Who can access the list?

While you can limit public access to your documents, Google staff can still access them (which means others can, too). Before you post confidential company (or personal) info in a document, spreadsheet, or presentation on Google docs (or any other online service like BuzzWord), please ask yourself, "What's the worst that can happen if this is leaked to the public or my competition?

As I predicted in "The Buzz on BuzzWord" the process continues.

Just be careful, and please don't get sucked in.....

Tis the Season

It's that time of year again.

Enjoy.....

www.youtube.com/watch

The Buzz on Buzzword

I know some of you use Buzzword (buzzword.acrobat.com) and like it. For those of you that don't, or haven't heard of it, it's a word processing program that works like Microsoft Word, except it's online and your documents are stored on their web server. The good things include being able to easily share your documents (thoughts and ideas) with others, and the people you share a document with can attach comments to it and, if you let them, even make changes.

Looks and sounds great, right?

Of course it does!!

Now before I get to the sneaky part, let me say that if you like Buzzword please continue to use it. I'm not trying to get you to change. However, I'm still going to attach my docs to my emails and here's why.

(Hint: this is the sneaky part. <wink> <wink>)

Back around the year 2000, Microsoft was looking to the next release of Office (2003) with an eye toward subscription software. They didn't think people would keep upgrading Office just to have the new version, and they didn't want to lose the revenue stream. So the idea was hatched that you don't buy the software, you subscribe to it. As in, "pay a yearly fee to use Office or the software on your computer locks up."

Word of this scheme leaked out and Microsoft Office users screamed so loudly about it you could hear them on the moon (ignoring for a moment the vaccuum of space). "I paid for the CD (DVD), what do you mean I have to pay an annual fee as well?!"

Microsoft said, "Oops." And the idea vanished so fast it was like it never happened.

Fast forward to today. Buzzword appears online. It's easy. It's convenient. It's easier than sending copies of a Word document via email. And it's FREE.

I predict that an online version of Excel will follow, along with an online version of Access, PowerPoint, etc. Hey, you don't need to lug your computer around with you when you go on the road, or to a friend's house. Just link up to the internet with whatever computer happens to be where you are and your good to go. After all, the computer wherever you are doesn't need the software installed on it, the software runs in your web browser on the internet.

This will go on for however many years it takes to (very slowly) build up a user base of folks who have migrated from Microsoft Office to the free online versions.

Eventually, we will hear things like, "Hey, we'd really love to keep this as a free service for you, but our servers are getting crowded with your documents so we need bigger ones, and there's maintenance, and access to the internet isn't free, etc. So, we're gonna have to charge a small monthly fee for this. We're sure you understand, and golly we're really sorry (whimper)." By this point, it will be inconvenient to go back to Office, so folks will pay.

Over time, the fees will go up. To make it easier for everyone, we will be allowed to pay annually instead of monthly (there will even be a discount). Just as with the cable companies raising their fees, we will grumble and we will complain, but we will pay.

In 10 to 15 years Microsoft will have it's guaranteed annual revenue stream from subscription software and we will be glad to pay it.

Once again, I'm not trying to get you to stop using Buzzword, but you have been warned!

-Phil
"Quini, quidi, quici" - I came, I saw, I played a little quidditch.

Quality Time - My Two Cents

From dictionary.reference.com/brows...20time

quality time
n. Time during which one focuses on or dedicates oneself to a person or activity: "When you decide to turn on the TV, you decide ... not to spend quality time with your family" (Steve Tschirhart).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Origin: 1985–90]

That's a nice definition and it may be true, but sadly most people use it as an excuse to bail on someone for someone (or something) else. "Sure I only have the kids Wednesdays after school and one weekend a month, but it's quality time!"

If you believe this is ok, ask yourself this question, "Would my boyfriend or girlfriend think it's ok that we only see each other Wednesdays after school and one weekend a month if it was quality time?" Peersonally, I don't think so.

Your wife/husband, children, friends, etc. don't want quality time with you. They want time with you, and lots of it, but not too much (you do have to draw a line somewhere, and yes, people also need space or alone time, too). So, spend time with them. You don't have to do any great thing or go to Disneyland every time, just be with them. In the long run you'll be surprised to see the impact you had on their lives.


If you found this post to be of interest, please pass it on.

If the shoe fits and this post offends you, good. I've done my job. :)

And that's My Two Cents.....

Three Things.....

Rules: Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done. Indulge in remorse if someone calls you out on a listed item.

Ok, here are three of mine:

1. Was a member of the Florida Association of Magical Entertainers.

2. Was the "authorised factory technician" who comes out and inspects your theatrical lighting system for a theater in Guayaquil, Equador.

3. Been on the stage crew for the Pageant of the Masters for 23 years.

(Number two is almost worthy of a blog post in itself.....)

-Phil

"Quini, quidi, quici" - I came, I saw, I played a little quidditch.