Man, what an absolutely terrible time to be unemployed. Not only is the economy in the NYC area so crappy that jobs are tough to come by, but Apple has to come out with their new 17" Powerbook. Argggghh!!!! So close yet so far! *sigh* Even the new ad is great! Definitely worth a look. =)

Ah well, I still have what, a year? to go before my self-imposed "no new Macs" restriction is up. Must work on my willpower! ;-p

Hmmm.... well there was the semi-big broohaha a few months back about a few websites put up by "entrepreneurial" ladies asking for donations to help them pay off their huge credit card bills. And what did the kind donators get in return? Nothing. Not even a nude photo. What a rip. ;-p Now, there's this new site where a young Asian woman is asking for donations to go towards her breast (currently 34A) enhancement fund. Wow. People never cease to surprise me. The target amount is $4500 and after a month of obscurity, I guess the site's rep is starting to make its way around cause she just got up to nearly $500 in one day. Interesting way to make some money I guess. Even if she doesn't make the $4500 required for a boob job, that's still a nice chunk of change she gets to keep for whatever she wants. Maybe I should start taking bets as to when we'll see www.givepenis.com.

The Present Out of Left Field Award this year goes to Andy Chang for the following:

Sorry for the fuzzy picture but Erin has my digital camera in Taiwan currently so I had to make do with my cell phone camera. For those of you who aren't anime fans, these are figurines of the main characters from Maison Ikkoku, my favorite anime series of all time. Having fun with eBay huh, Andy? ;-) But they're very cool. =) Now I just need a scale model of Ikkoku-kan and my figurines will have a home! ;-p

Ahh, the power of the Internet. There's a new Listerine commercial with this absolutely cute-as-hell woman in it so I figured I'd google to see if I could find any info on the young woman. Unfortunately, nothing turned up so far except for more fans looking for the same info. Although I did find this picture which another fan took. Unfortunately it doesn't cover the entire sequence since her last few expressions in the commercial are the cutest. ;-)

Hard to concentrate while watching SNL w/Al Gore. Some pretty funny stuff.

Anyhoo, since my last spew, the world's pretty much continuing its spiraling descent to oblivion. I have my My Yahoo page set up to display 9 headlines per news category and pretty much something bad is going on in the world 90% of the time in every single category except sports and entertainment. And even today there was the laughable "North Korea Says Bond Movie Insults Korea" headline under entertainment which just highlights the fact that dictators and religious nuts need to lighten up and get a sense of humor and a grip on reality. I'm sure they'll also be beefing up their coastal defenses to defend against top secret agent surfers. Idiots.

Now I know that the education (or lack of) of today's US youths have been beaten to death already but apparently the media never tires of it since there was this article a few weeks back which basically reconfirms the fact that 18-24 year old Americans are absolute dunces when it comes to geography. Not that I really think that one's knowledge of geography is the benchmark of one's overall intelligence but when 70% of the survey takers can't find New Jersey on a map... maybe I'm just touchy since I live in NJ.

Anyways, to top it all off, the inevitable occurred this past week and Qwest finally decided to lay off the rest of the web services group. At this point it consisted only of the content management group. While the group (QWCC) I was moved to a few months back was spared, I and another coworker in QWCC were let go simply because we were in the wrong office. Most of the members of QWCC are in either Philadelphia or Denver. My guess is that the days of the Weehawken office are numbered. First time I've been layed off in my professional career and it's a peculiar feeling. Sad cause I did have a pretty sweet gig going on at Qwest. I'll miss my ol' office there. At least Qwest has a pretty nice severance package. Well, here's hoping to a brighter New Year. We all need it.