Stumbled.

Favorite thing equals stumbleupon.com.  I'm always looking for new methods of procrastination, and this is the best ever.  Just now I stumbled across a real life picture of Buzz Lightyear, and the randomness continues forever thanks to this nearly infinite source of stupid I like to call the internet.  And this website is super smart.  It knows exactly what I like.  When you first sign up you enter some of your basic interests, like elephants and mind games.  But lately I've been convinced that this site can read my mind.  Recently my Mac crashed for unknown reasons and I lost all of my iTunes.  All 2305 songs I've spent a long time collecting a quite a bit of money on.  Surprisingly, Apple has no way of taking your music off of your iPod and putting it back on iTunes, a major flaw in the system.  So on my new crappy lil PC I've been seriously lacking music, which is another one of my main forms of procrastination.  On my StumbleUpon account I check iPod as one of my interests, and within about three minutes of my background music free browsing what comes up but a website suggesting ways to pull music from your iPod to PC.

Now, I've tried a lot of these methods and I'll be the first to admit they are a little sketchy.  Some of them required plugging your iPod in, hitting a complicated key sequence to keep your iPod from syncing and clearing completely of music, and revealing "hidden files" that would magically show up in your iTunes minutes later.  But this method didn't work for me.  Apparently my computer is so incredibly smart it doesn't even recognize my iPod for what it is, but instead insists it's actually a digital camera.  It's not.  So I couldn't cheat Apple out this time, but Steve Jobs wasn't about to win that easily.  The website had some other options, and it suggested this software called Cucusoft so that when you plug your iPod in all the songs show up in this other program and you can transfer them all in one simple motion.  This program does make it sound like my computer is going to explode when it's pulling music off, but it works.  The downside is it costs thirty dollars, a little pricey for my frugal budget, but I bought it anyway.  And I guess it's better to spend thirty dollars on a simple software than to re-buy 2305 songs, because that would cost quite a bit more money.  So thank you StumbleUpon for that little chunk of cash, you are the best,

But besides solving all my music issues it can do so much more!  Want to interpret your dreams?  Go for it.  And if by chance I find something less than interesting, although this rarely happens, I can move onto the next quality piece of procrastination with the simple click of the "Stumble" button.  Will my homework get done tonight?  That's questionable if I somehow get on StumbleUpon.  I can waste hours reading Dr. Suess quotes.  A few of my favorites are, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It's not."  "Today was good.  Today was fun.  Tomorrow is another one."  "And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed!  Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed."  And this ridiculously over used, "Don't cry because it's over.  Smile because it happened."  Dr. Suess will always amaze me in his ability to come up with inspiration quotes even when he is attempting to use less than 50 different words in his book.  And they rhyme.  What a genius.


Perhaps some of the greatest StumbleUpon treasures are the cute animal picture sites.  Who knew even a baby mouse is cute?  Well now I do and you can too.  And a turtle small enough to crawl on your finger does exist, so that's super exciting too.  I can even coordinate a horse quartet with the simple click of my mouse (even though these are cartoon horses and not real life baby horses it's still cool.)  So if you like animals of any type, check this thing out.


Finally, another equally entertaining feature of this website is it's links to complete time waster games.  I've spent longer than I need to admit on this game, and probably more time filling in colored squares than it took me to write this entire post.  But StumbleUpon has done me some good.  How would I have written this super-long blog post without spending time researching my website selections first.  So I've been entertained stumbling across the internet as I document my virtual journey.

I'm optimistic that websites like StumbleUpon are not only time wasters but can get people truly engaged in their interests, and yeah, maybe provide a much needed break from homework.  Now, I'm going back online, and maybe I'll get some homework done, but the way things are looking I'll be stumbling instead, and that's fine with me.