A line about the other fish getting liver tumors made me wonder if people in that area also suffered liver tumors or maybe if people are smart enough they don’t drink water from the Hudson River.  Anyways, I tried to google-up a map to tell me and I found this map:

you can set all types of parameters except the obvious ones such as all ages, all genders and other races.

Then I noticed that the newest data available is 1994.

These are things that make me wonder.

this excerpt is from a totally fascinating article about the 35,000 stray dogs roaming Moscow. Hmmm

I wonder if humans have that same biochemical path?

I was led down that engaging path by Chris Pederick’s Stuff I’m Reading. Chris Pederick wrote two of the very few Firefox Extensions that I use. Web Developer and User Agent Switcher are pretty much the reason I usually work in FF. He’s one of those people who make me go hmmm.

Of course, the FT.com article also led me to Andrei Poyarkov who works at A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in south-west Moscow but that’s an adventure for another time. I’m losing the bewitching hour as I write this and I have some witching to do.

If you never see me again, it’ll mean I cast the wrong spell and can’t migrate to a VPS.

Actually, it surprised me that Sitepoint, a wonderful design resource, ran a poll yesterday to see whether RSS is “mainstream”. It also promoted the poll heavily on Twitter which Sitepoint says “headed to mainstream”.

Both Sitepoint actions facinated me.  Sitepoint is a site for web designers and developers.  I would think, for their audience, RSS would be mainstream.

Most of my sites have nothing to do with the Internet other than the fact they’re web pages.  When offered, I’ve had few RSS takers to any of my blogs.   Even the one with thousands of email subscribers has only a handful of RSS subscribers.  I thought that told me RSS isn’t mainstream.

Anyway, so far the RSS poll is interesting.  If you’ve got a min, pop over and vote so you can take a peek at the results.

Sitepoint’s promo of the poll on Twitter however is a whole ‘nuther ball a’ beezewax.  Their current giveaway of a $30 pdf ebook on CSS to gain Twitter followers though I don’t see a “follow me on” link on their site yet makes me Wonder too :)

The email I showed her was from a friend in an email group I belong to, “Ideas by Post”.  I plan to tell you more about “Ideas by Post” in a separate post.

Anyway, I’d asked my buddy group to do the same thing I’d just asked her to do, review this blog.  I read somewhere that a blogging beginner should do that :)

When I showed my local gal pal my blog, I think I impressed her. Even so, she had a couple of good ideas.  She said I should add my picture and make the type bigger.  The sweetheart even said wished she had a computer so she could read it regularly.  She really is a great friend.

My IBP buddy, on the other hand, was maybe even a bit brutal^* in his page long criticism of my site. Among the things he told me were “it’s not a blog . . . it’s a diary” and “you need to concentrate some time on learning to write headlines”. He advised me to “restructure it for a shorter more concise presentation” and “find a direction”.

My friend from the IBP group is a professional writer and a creative force behind the Freelance Writing Organization – International. He’s also remodeling an old house, btdt. He’s a busy, busy man.

Just the fact he gave me his input should tell you how good a friend of mine he’s become on our little email group.

So, neither of my friends are my enemies but they don’t see the same picture of my web blog that I do either.  I see a blog that’s about becoming a web designer, step by tiny step with lots of adventures and meanderings along the way.  They see what probably is really here.

You can read all of the professional blogging advice I got (and my reply “In Self Defense”)  by joining the Ideas by Post bunch at Yahoo Groups.  Then, you can ask our many experts just about anything you need to know and get a straight answer.

*“. . . do you mean to regale us with stories of what it is like to be you on the net?” (O.K. I thought that was kinda mean but, yep, I do.)

RecentX is a program that keeps track of all of your recently closed files, imagine that.   I had expected a video game that lets you kill your exhusband 19 different ways but I downloaded it anyway.

It’s great for me.  Has tabs for Files, Folders, Programs and Websites and just records what you close and when.

Yes, I know I already can keep track of most of that to some extent but not like this.  I now have a nice iconic bar tucked away in the corner of my screen that gets me back where I was fast.

There are some big changes coming, if not in the U.S., then at least in my life.  I just ordered my first laptop computer.  (No sh*t from the Mac fans or real geek types, o.k.?  It’s what I can afford.)

No more being chained to a desk in my office. Ah, life is going to be so sweet.  Of course, my bailout’s paying for it, right?

After getting totally frustrated, I typed a big old long sentence into Google: “cannot align my images to the right in wordpress”.  Turns out it’s a common problem and I wasn’t adding quite the right code to my css style file.

A beautiful post with a fix right here.  It worked on both my templates and I’m sooo grateful :)

I did already have one wonderful thing happen. The instructor mentioned that on my blogger profile page, the location was a link to all the other bloggers from the same place.

I already knew that because there were something like 38 other wackos like me blogging in Sioux Falls, South Dakota back when I started that blog and I first saw that link.

Still, I did like she said and clicked on it.

Wow!  I was amazed to find out there are 428 Blogger blogs from my town alone.  That made me wonder how many are from Kansas City?  How many are there in total?  What about WordPress blogs?  Other blogs?  Wow, it’s just mind boggling, isn’t it?

And, this is the sweet part, I found the most beautiful blog of a local photographer. Be sure and scroll all the way to the bottom and read the post about Dominic. It will tell you more about my town than that other link.

Hope the story didn’t make you cry the way it always does me?

Anyway, I want to add a Wonder’s Featured Sites toolbar over there on the right but I’m going to have to wait on that until I get a few things figured out.

So without further ado, the start of Wonder’s featured sites are:

IT facts, a wonderful ZDNet blog here with a reminder to keep your chin up and a reason I changed my blog template; and

Technical Lists from eConsultant is a list of about every list you’re supposed to blog about as a beginning blogger, I believe ;)