More USPTO stupidity and say hello to the TWITs

Well, first of all Microsoft and their little friends the USPTO are at it again. Microsoft has filed a patent on smilies. That's right. If the patent is granted then any chat program that uses smilies (such as Yahoo! Instant Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, and any other clients like Apple's iChat) will be in violation of Microsoft's patent. I'm waiting for Microsoft to try and patent the wheel. At that point I'll be convinced that the boys in Redmond have lost their minds.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I would like to invite you to say hello to the TWITs! The TWITs are a group of people from the now-defunct TechTV channel. They've gotten together and are producing a Podcast pretty much every week. The usual people on the Podcast are Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Roger Chang, Kevin Rose, Robert Heron, and John C. Dvorak (yeah THAT John C. Dvorak). The Podcast is all about technology. It's not about Microsoft or Apple or any other company. They just dicuss the latest technology items in the news (like Microsoft's latest patent application), and how they affect us. I like listening to them (although Dvorak has a tendency to get on my nerves!) because they are all very well informed about technology and how it works and they often have some interesting insights into what's really going on behind the stories we read about.

The Return of the King...

Okay, I don't really consider myself to be a king, but I am returning from a long absence from my blog. I've been away for three weeks, and boy has it ever been crazy. I went to my grandfather's house for the fourth of July. Independence Day is his birthday and my grandparents just happen to live a block away from the site of the biggest Independence Day celebration in Utah. So, that was fun.

We stayed for a couple more weeks after the fourth because my cousin was getting married on the 20th. I've never been involved in wedding preparations before, and I had no idea how much work it was. Being LDS the wedding required very little on our part. The wedding was held in the LDS temple in Salt Lake City, and there was no decorating or anything required for that (it also doesn't cost anything other than gas to get there). All we really had to do was get ready for the reception, and I couldn't believe how much work that was. I'm almost dreading when I get married just based on how stressful that was for everyone. I have also decided that I will not be involving my grandmother. She personally caused a good deal of the stress that we were all feeling as she was feeling stressed and decided that we all needed to share. But, it's all over now...until next month when another cousing is getting married. This time I'm not getting there until a few days before the wedding.