Oh, the History

One thing I pretty much never do: nap. I may not want to get up in the morning (ever), but once I'm up, I'm up. I rarely, rarely, rarely ever take a nap in the morning, afternoon, or evening. My normal schedule... up by 8:30 am and fight sleep until about 1 am. Sleep for a few hours and back at it again. Today, for some reason, I got very sleepy looking at my computer screen at about 5:30 pm. And then the oddest thing happened, I took a little baby nap. I only slept for about 30 minutes, but I woke up with a clearer head than I've had in a really long time. Clarity... what a concept. I didn't know it really existed in my head, but... boom... there it was.

In other of-interest news tonight, I am working quite hard this evening on clearing out the unread RSS feeds in my IE Feed Reader. There've been bold "unreads" for several days now, as I just haven't had the time... or haven't made the time to catch up on all my reading. (Sometimes, certain bloggers write really long and difficult-to-get-through posts. Not me. Never.) Anyway, the "Official Google Blog" has an interesting post today... Searching Without a Query. I know Google (and other search companies) keeps crazy amounts of data on us. Who hasn't heard about the story where search data was posted for "research" and became a major privacy issue? And I know my always-useful Google Toolbar "remembers" my search history. This is convenient. Sometimes I want to repeat searches or find an interesting page I stumbled upon and lost. But I never really thought about that data being out there... in the ether. Silly me. Of course it is. In today's blog, Mr. Google links me to my very own "Search History" page that, once I'm logged into my Google account, displays all my search history with the exact phrase I typed in as well as any of the results I clicked on (plus any searches with no clicked results listed at the bottom of each date). Wow!! Google is slick. And scary. I'm enthralled with this data and also quite bothered that it's out there. Conflicted, one might say. Where's that clarity I spoke so highly of in paragraph 1??? Check out your own search history... if you use Google, that is... which I know many of you do! It's interesting, if nothing else. Kinda builds a pattern and paints a picture of your obsessions. Anyway, the point of the blog wasn't actually that... it was a new pair of dice you can add to your toolbar... a recommendations feature that takes you straight to a possible site of interest based on your search history. Google's always coming up with cool things.

Meanwhile, I promised pics of the Jekyll vaca a long while back, and I still haven't sorted through the (digital) piles. But here are a couple that jumped out at me tonight. Perhaps... just perhaps... you haven't already seen them. Okay, so, sue me... I picked out 12. I know, too many. But it's just as well... b/c Blogger doesn't seem to want me to post them anyway. Never mind. I'll work on that again later. For now, rest easy parcheesi.