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Site Seeing
By JULES ALLEN Putting youth to the testLife, in case you haven't been watching, is wholly subjective. Who among us can truly measure success or smarts with any accuracy? Perhaps this is why we crave a tape measure for our intellects: IQ tests, SATs and degrees supposedly say how we shape up against our peers. But rather than blazing through your retirement funds for your ungrateful offspring, why not point them at this site, have them take a few tests on Net addiction, metal head and grunge tendencies and have them print out the results at the end? I bet you employers won't even notice. Robot loveGosh, we're lucky this column made it to press at all. It's not because of my usual tardy filing but because of a slight accident with my coffee caused by laughing so hard, you understand. My advice is to steer clear of hot beverages and trundle your browser and MP3 player over to this site. Some wag had the idea of taking the pronunciation hint audio clips from online dictionaries and marrying them with cheesy versions of your favorite pop hits. The tune in question that caused the aforementioned mishap is Elton John's Don't Go Breaking My Heart. Either I'm easily amused or this site is brilliant. Or maybe both. Itchy feetThinking of moving to or from the Tampa Bay area? If you're considering leaving in beautiful December, you're nuts. But come July who knows what the humidity will have done to your brain. If you need help picking out that perfect place, this site has a lengthy point-and-click questionnaire to help guide your choice. It's really quite good and worth the exchange of demographic information. Get one of those free e-mail addresses if you're wary of being spammed or having your precious address sold. Who ya gonna call?Disinformation seems to be the lifeblood of e-mail, and I'm always surprised at the kind of alarmist dross that fills my inbox. While my well-meaning chums really are trying to do the right thing, gently debunking the information is the only way to help them save face and stop clogging my mailbox with rubbish. I recently rediscovered this excellent resource from the Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability division. I'm glad somebody's on top of it. Under the hoodBack in the good old days, you'd find hard-core techies eagerly modifying their cars, messing with all manner of things to make it faster and perform a little better. Fast forward to today and, unless you've got oodles of specialized auto-specific computerized equipment, tweaking a car is all but impossible, which is why sites like this are everywhere. There's nothing that gives us humans a greater feeling of self-worth than beating the system. If you're a tinkerer and not afraid of getting under the hood of Windows XP, this site's for you.
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