Tired of School

In a surprise to me and the Internet as a whole.  Stootsi.com appears to be suddenly closing their virtual doors.  There is very little information on the Stootsi site other than an email address that purports to be for customer service.  I am sad that this business is no longer a part of the Internet.  I spent many hours on the site in the early days.  It started as a deal-of-the-day website that, in my opinion, was better than woot.com on price and coolness.  The folks that owned the website interacted with the members in blogs and forums.  They would often talk about what they ate for lunch among other unimportant topics.  They were real people making it in the world.

My favorite part of the early iteration of the website was the weekly contests.  Often they had very clever contests that you could win money or gift certificates by playing.  I won various places in the contests early on.  At some point they moved to only picture captioning contest (which I abhor), so I stopped visiting as often.  Still, though I wished the site the best.  As time went on the website started selling more and more things until there was  a glut of disjointed items for sale on a very busy and hard to navigate website.

Still though, the people who ran the website seemed to be genuine and I wish them the best.

I have now finished my second Master’s Degree and am no longer tired of school!

It’s true and it was on TV. I about fell out of my chair. I’m sure there will be a video online soon that I can refer you to.

Update: the videos are going up and coming down on your favorite video websites.  I don’t want to post one as it will stop working shortly.  However, I imagine this video will be a permanent fixture on youtube now so feel free to look for it there.

• I recently discovered that there were quite a few people, likely young men, who search the web in an effort to learn how to grow a beard…and do it quickly. What is so special about growing a beard? It’s a right of passage. Even if all you have are five long hairs growing off your chin…you are a manly man because you have a beard. I was endowed with epic beard-growing properties myself and I grow one every winter so I don’t have to shave in cold weather. So, to help the inexperienced among us I present:

• HOW TO GROW A BEARD:

• Stage 1: The beginning: All you have to do is to stop shaving. Do it at the very beginning of a vacation or at least at the start of a weekend so you get a couple days’ head start before the next stage begins.

• Stage 2: The interrogation: Everyone and their second cousins will be asking you if you are growing a beard. Always give a response that makes them feel stupid or else they will keep asking you this over and over. Say something like “No, I have a highly contagious rash and the doctors told me not to shave for a while.”

• Stage 3: The itching: You can expect to spend about 2 weeks itching your face. Use your fingernails, use your pencil, use your eating utensils, none of it will help…you just keep itching.

• Stage 4: In-grown hair: Yes, the joy of carrying around a bush on your face is that you will get the occasional in-grown hair. Take it like a man.

• Stage 5: Wild bush man: Yes you finally did it, you grew a beard. But you don’t look like Kenny Rogers or ZZ Top just yet.

• Stage 6: Taming the beast: It’s now time to take the clipper to the hedge and make yourself presentable. You could go for the Commander Riker or the Sigmund Freud. Just get it under control soon or you may scare away your friends and family.

• Stage 7: The ‘stash: About four months after you get the beard going you’ll have a moment of weakness and decide that you’d really look sophisticated with a moustache.

• Stage 8: The end: About 2 minutes after finishing stage seven you realize that you aren’t one of those guys who can sport the upper lip canopy and it gets cut off as well. Welcome back to the land of the clean shaven.

So, you know all those things you said you would do if you didn’t have to study? Now is the time. Here’s some of the things I’ve been doing to pass the time (besides summer classes of course):

• reading for pleasure (The Similarion)
• learn a new language (Spanish) if you want to learn with me go to livemocha.com
• losing weight/running/cycling
• cleaning the apartement
• organizing 15 years worth of computer files and harddrives
• listening to music (I use Ruckus)
• listening to really good music (Kyle Mann Combo)
• Traveling (on the MegaBus)