February 24th is FREE PANCAKE DAY!

Visit an IHOP near you, get some free pancakes and help your local Children's Hospital.

I became a grandpa today. Woohoo!

UPDATE: Still waiting for our first photos. We live in L.A. and they live in New York, so stopping by to visit and harrass the new parents is out of the question. The baby was born one month early and is in great shape, so we're sure mom is really happy about missing that last month of waddling and toilet stops every thirty minutes. They named their new son Martin, after MLK, as they're hardcore progressives. If it was my kid, I would've named him Putthatdownnow, or Donttouchthat, or Bringthatbackhererightthisminute.

For many years I have subscribed to Neat Net Tricks Newsletter, which is always chock full of information about useful, unusual and interesting web sites. I highly recommend this bi-monthly newsletter, and now the free edition is returning. Go to Neat Net Tricks and subscribe. You won't be disappointed.

Today is Free Pancake Day at IHOP! Stop by your local IHOP and help a worthy cause (Children's Hospitals).


I have been employed at our local Children's Hospital for 25 years and can verify that every penny donated goes directly to patient care and support, especially those patients whose parents can ill afford (pun intended) the astronomical costs of healthcare.

I just found out about this cool hidden feature in Windows XP. Do a search for chkrzm.exe on your C: drive. Look for

C:\Program Files\MSN Gaming Zone\Windows\chkrzm.exe

Click the file name (to start the game) and you will be connected to the internet where you can play checkers live with another person!

Do you use, or know someone else who uses, Microsoft Excel? If so, then you can download the ebook version of a great new Excel book, Learn Excel 97-2007, by going here:

http://www.mrexcel.com/preview9097.html

and then downloading it for free. The author is giving away this online version in hopes that a percent of the readers will buy the hardcopy version. I use this book and highly recommend it.

And it's free. Really.

I came across this very interesting free online service: JOTT. Once you set it up, you can send a message to anyone's email from your phone, including yourself. Essentially, you call up JOTT on your cell phone, give the name of the contact and speak your message. Someone then immediately transcribes it and emails it to the designated recipient. I find this useful when driving, where I can speed dial JOTT, say "myself" and then give a voice message that becomes an email reminder to myself. If I can't reach my wife or child on their phones, I can send them an email from my phone. Very interesting use of available technology.

Let me tell you about a free program I started using a week ago: KlipFolio. This is a time-saving program. Example: Normally I check several political blogs repeatedly throughout the day using a browser (e.g. Firefox, IE7, etc.). KlipFolio allows me to instantly check summaries of new posts at these blogs (via RSS feeds that take literally seconds to set up one time). Also, there are "klips" for current weather, live cams, news feeds, and countless other info sources. The format is very configurable, especially for a free program. I put my "Folio" on the right side of the screen and made it auto-hide, so it's always available and yet out of the way. Here's a review from Download.com:

Editor's review of KlipFolio If you want a quick and easy way to get RSS newsfeeds, weather, and stock information, Serence KlipFolio is a great place to start. The small interface lets you look at headlines from selected news sources called Klips. The program includes a few preloaded Klips, and you can download hundreds more from the publisher's Web site. The interface displays headlines in an attached window that you can mouse over for news summaries. If you're interested in a particular news item, just click the headline to open the story in a browser window. When you're done, you can either quit the program or minimize it to the taskbar for easy access. You can configure the colors and appearance of KlipFolio and create Klips for any newsfeed--something that in previous versions required a trip to the publisher's Web site. Some may find the interface too small, but Serence KlipFolio ought to satisfy most news hounds.

I highly recommend this rare, quality freeware.

Don't forget to claim your telephone war tax refund on your income tax form this year (for the 2006 tax year). Everyone who files an income tax form is eligible. So far about one third of all people who filed income tax forms this year failed to claim this refund!

The standard refund for a family can range from about $20 to $60, depending on the number of dependents. If you itemize the amount you can get a refund closer to $100 to $200; it just means you have to go through your phone bills (not cell phones, but I might be wrong) for the past three years and find the monthly amounts. If you want more information, then see the brief instructional videos at this web site. Here's the IRS web page that explains it in more detail.

**UPDATE: Michael Swartz thankfully left the following comment to correct my "cell phones" comment:

Cell phones are indeed applicable. In fact, in NY State alone, over $251 million dollars are owed to cell phone users from this illegal tax. Unfortunately, few people are collecting their refund.
SOURCE: http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/pressroom/record.cfm?id=259402&

This is really cool.

I came across this web site called Wowio. It allows you to download for free up to 5 ebooks per day. The books are current or very recent releases in all subject areas.

There are a handful of ads embedded in each book, which is how the web site supports itself. The site is new and quickly growing. You view the books using a PDF reader (e.g. Adobe Reader) allowing you to read the book on just about any computer or PDF-supporting handheld.

Here is my download selection for today:

* A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind
* Skipping Towards Armageddon
* The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman
* Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion
* The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe

So you can see the selections are first-rate. And they're free. And legit. Really.