Turtles all the way down

Google is mainly two things: search and advertising. The rest of what they do (email, for example) is incidental.

But their strength at search has had a couple of unintended consequences on my behavior, and perhaps that of others as well.

Google is my pre-DNS server. When I can’t remember a domain name or am feeling too lazy to spell one out, I can type it into the Google search box in Firefox. I get the right hit almost all of the time.

Google is replacing bookmarks and typing URLs. I bookmark very little these days because I can get to the right place through Google faster than navigating my bookmark tree. The other reason I don’t have to bookmark frequently is that many of the sites I would normally visit regularly I now access via an RSS feed through Bloglines. After all, an RSS feed is just a fancy bookmark, right? I suspect that someone could be creative and come up with a Firefox plugin that manages your bookmarks and RSS feeds while keeping them current by querying Google in the background.

Google is my spell-checker. You don’t have to bother typing in a search term correctly as Google will suggest a correction. Rather than firing up Word, just enter an incorrect spelling into Google.

I can’t help but think I’m responsible for this…

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - The windy city is also the most wired, according to a survey that showed people in Chicago are the most caffeinated in the United States.

Chicagoans eat more chocolate and drink more cola than other U.S. urbanites, and are among the top consumers of energy drinks and coffee.

They are also likely to say caffeine is good for you, according to the poll conducted by Prince Market Research.

…Christmas.

One of my classmates noted yesterday that the state of a law school student is “really effing tired.” I can’t argue with that, especially for those of us trying to hold down a full time job while in school.

But for me it is slowly coming together. About two weeks I felt like I started turning the corner. My Criminal Law outline is in reasonable shape, my writing is getting better, and I have a pretty good idea how I’m going to attack Torts.

I’m getting about 6-7 hours of sleep each night. I’m tired most days, having early afternoon crashes, but otherwise doing ok. I’ve proven to myself that I’m mentally and physically resilient enough to make it this far. With only six weeks left to the semester I know I can finish to the best of my ability.

Not that it’s going to be easy. But it’s doable.

My favorite music download site, eMusic swapped out their old download manager for a new one. The old manager worked well. You clicked on one button to download all of the tracks from an album and it did the work for you, sticking the music in an appropriately named directory of your choosing.

The new manager is an attempt to be a music player and collection manager as well. Big problem, however. It screws up the basic task I need it for, which is downloading. Every single time I download an album, at least one track doesn’t arrive properly. Every single time.

So I’ve turned off the default download manager option in my account settings. I’m experimenting with Free Download Manager and Download Them All, the latter a Firefox plugin. Once I get one of them to operate properly in one-click mode I should be set.

I finally found a Metra parking space. Not an official one, and that’s all I’ll say about it. And I’m paying through the nose for this privilege.

The Pace Bus Cuts are postponed for another two months as various state and local governments continue to play chicken with one another over the funding.

Why do I care? Two reasons. The first is enlightened self interest. My parking space may not last forever and if the bus cuts go through I might find myself having to get up at 4am each day just to be able to park my car at the station. The second is hopefully just enlightenment - I’m strongly in favor of clean, safe, ubiquitous mass transportation. And I’m willing to pay additional taxes for it.

But the difference in having this spot is amazing. I get an extra hour of sleep. I get to choose which morning train I take. I have time to get my kids ready for school in the morning.

Maybe what the country needs is enough pain to force us to fund mass transit the way more European cities and Japan have done. Let’s hear it for $5 per gallon gas.