Hey guys. I know you've all been working hard to keep up with the 31-Day Challenge, and I've been impressed by the outpouring of blog entries that have come out of this thing. I'm actually pretty impressed that so many of you have stuck with it despite tight holiday schedules and occassional bouts of blogger's block.

You've done so well and you only have 2 days to go! Keep working hard to the end of the week. You can make it!

If you are one of the challengers and you have kept up well, I will need your home address. I have info for most of you, but either way, please send your snailmail deets to iamawinner@31for31.com. Prizes will take some time to get out, so look for them in mid-January.

First of all, let me apologize for the totally lame effort at posting yesterday. While the bowl schedule is useful to have at my fingertips (without cluttering up my bookmarks with links that will be obsolete in a month), I should not have been so lazy.

Actually, I planned to post a video of the Stella scooter I'm hoping to purchase this year, but I got distracted in my search by other videos of scooter crashes, panda attacks, and people farting. Isn't youtube a fascinating meeting place of all things base and disturbing (and therefore grossly funny)? (Update: more Stella news and even more. Guess what color I want.)

Anyhow, last night, we finally initiated our Christmas shopping. Pop and T had the kids, so we were free to shop for Halleigh, and we got some other gift ideas for the sibs, which made the search a little easier.

We kept running into a problem though: what would we get Beau that Halleigh doesn't already have. I mean, we can get him some clothes, but we kept seeing toys that are already available at home. Blocks? Got some. Shape-sorter? Got it. Bath toys? Got those too. Books? Sooo many. etc. etc. etc. We can always buy new and different varieties, but it's hard to find stuff that isn't really similar to what we already have.

Have other parents of multiple kids run into the same issue?

As of now, we have seven eight nine ten eleven challengers including myself, but it's not too late to join in the fun (as long as you post something to your blog today). All of these folks are linked in the sidebar, but just for convenience sake, here is a list of the other participating blogs.

• Our Own Little Happy Place
• The Spicy Redneck
• In Medias Res
• The World According to Kristy
• Uncle Moustache
• Still Waiting for the Dawn
• The Travis Skinny
• b-u-r-l-y-f-a-m-i-l-y
• The Gearys
• This Classical Life

Happy blogging!

I'm announcing the first December 31-Day Challenge. In order to participate, you simply have to post here in the comments that you are taking up the challenge, and then post to your blog at least once every day for all 31 days in December. I will be doing it whether or not I have any co-bloggers. If you join in the challenge and make it all 31 days, I will send you a prize at the end. But don't forget to comment here if you're participating. Good luck

I don't use Facebook. I have an intense dislike for having to register/login to stuff online. I don't even check my email as much as I would like because I have to login. That's also why I would consider closing down this blog if spam got so bad I had to make people register or enter captcha responses.

That's also one reason why I never use facebook. If you requested me as a friend, and I haven't answered, its not because I don't like you, and you're not alone. I just don't like having to sign in to use it.

I know. I'm weird.

6 billion people in the world.

4 billion under the age of 40.

3,999,999,999 on Facebook.

1 me.

But for all the ways Facebook turns me off, I've found one thing that I think is worth loving in the Facebook world. The Add to Friends t-shirt. Why don't they have Add to Queue DVD cases at blockbuster? Or Add to Book List dust jackets at the library? Too cool.

Found via the Airtight Interactive Blog.

By tracking search terms like "flu symptoms," Google can predict increased flu activity, and by approximating likely IP address locations, Goolge can track the spread of the flu across regions of the world. Impressive.

 This reminds me of a historian I once met who had traced the likely path of small pox infections by mapping Catholic death and burrial records in the American southwest. I'll never cease to be amazed at the creative ways people can use information when they can get it in large doses.

(Via JoHO)

Whenever I hear about McCain's lack of 21st-century-ness, I am strangely torn between laughing and crying.

Here's an interesting article that illustrates some of the culture gaps that still persist in the face of the global technology revolution.

Today, I had a visitor to my blog from the Philippines. That makes visitors from at least 51 countries since I started keeping track for the fun of it in February. I'm always amazed by the random flow of strangers that filter through the site. Earlier in the week I had a visitor from Tehran. I guess that's the nature of the new global world we live in.

The funny thing is that I visit very few foreign sites--in fact, I often avoid them. The traffic seems to be one way. I wonder if that is because of my lack of language skills, or another sign of how disconnected Americans are from the rest of the world.

I took the 2008 List Apart survey and so should you. I think it is terribly interesting, and the larger the sample, the better the results.