another free office suite?!

crazy news, just found out that IBM has released a FREE office suite, basically it's own version of OpenOffice. I found out about it here, but you can check the Lotus Symphony out here.

check your health insurance.....quick!!!

Okay, so I've been checking into my company's health insurance. Since I'm aware of how health insurance providers can be infamously finicky about doling out dough to pay for stuff, I thought I'd try and work through as much of the small print as I could.

And I found something interesting. Medical aid recieved because of an "act of war" whether "declared or undeclared" is not covered by this health plan. What?! How unpatriotic is that?!

Here's the rub, though. A friend mentioned that this line of exceptions were probably added after 9/11. Why? Because so many people probably had to file insurance claims after that event. Why? Well, probably because they got hurt because of an "undeclared" act of war.

Here's my question, are health insurance providers here to help us get decent health care, or are they in it for the money? That may seem to be a flippant question, but it's answer will largely determine their direction and their decisions.

So, um, I'd grab the latest copy of my health insurance coverage, if I were you, and check out some of that smaller print.

awesome practical joke

Okay folks, I don't know if this is the best practical joke I've ever seen, but it ranks up there with the top ones. check it out here.

awesome add-ons for firefox...

Had a friend tell me about an awesome add-on for Firefox, called Bookburro. Basically what it does is if it detects that the page you are viewing has a book in it (or is about a book), it pops up a little thingy in the upper left-hand corner of the page which you can click on. When you click on it, a little menu drops down searching for and then listing the prices of the book on different websites (you can indicate which ones). Pretty awesome, huh? Get it at bookburro.org.

Oh, and note that you will have to give the site permission to install it in firefox - just follow the instructions on the little thingy that pops down at the top of your browser.

Here's a list of all the other Firefox Add-ons I use and love:

Download Statusbar - this is just a better way of managing your downloads than Firefox's native way.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - This is especially awesome if you use Firefox on multiple computers. Just install it in each Firefox installation and it will synch up your bookmarks and links bar whenever you use 'em. Prett snazzy, huh?!

Random Theme Switcher - Okay, this is just because I enjoy different themes and am too lazy to switch 'em myself. Pretty much it just randomly chooses a theme every time you start up Firefox. I enjoy it because I never know what Firefox is gonna look like! (it keeps things interesting...)

Google Notebook - I just enjoy this for collecting random stuff from all over the web. I've also used it for some research for school projects.

MediaPlayerConnectivity - this is primarily to play streamed media in Ubuntu, but it does give you more control over what your browser does with media links on a page (and more options).

Colorful Tabs - really the most simple concept, but really awesome. basically this just makes your different tabs different colors, and you can assign specific colors to specific sites if you want to.

So there ya go - my favorite add-ons for Firefox. Let me know if there are any you suggest!

man - the cross-eyed reader

Interesting article about the latest research into how we read. I just think it's interesting that our eyes don't focus on the same letters, but on different letters and our brains fuse the 'image' of the two views together into one view.

So my question is, does the man with the lazy eye actually get more of the big picture because he doesn't have such a narrow focus as the rest of us? ;-)

interesting new movie from Pixar...

So, we just got back from a great weekend at my parents place and I'm trying to distract Keaton until Terra's ready to feed him and put him to bed. Some times I do this by showing him trailers on Quicktime's trailer portion of their website. I found this one, which looks like Pixar is actually going to take on a sci-fi themed movie.

I can't wait to see how this turns out!