I like to animate things sometimes. I’ve been working on these animated smilies for awhile now and thought I would share them here. You can also download the Flash source to view in Flash CS3 if you’d like as well.

Get the Flash Source Here

I’ve had the same AdSense account since September 14th, 2004. I’m proud to say that my current total is $47.28 and rising extremely slowly. I’m currently making less than 12 bucks a year on my ads. Now, I don’t really care that much because I have a full time job so I don’t really need the extra cash.

AdSense works by companies or individuals creating ad campaigns and “bidding” on the amount that they will pay for a specific keyword. When their ads are shown on various websites and are clicked on, they pay Google that amount of money. In turn, Google takes a part of that money and “pays” it to the AdSense user. So you see, unless you’ve hit $100, Google retains all of the cash and doesn’t have to pay out anything.

I usually only get a few cents every couple of days, with the exception of one time when my website hit the homepage of Digg.com and I got $21.19 that day.

This got me thinking about how much money Google is making off of all the small websites that are like mine. I know that there are thousands of websites out there that are in similar boat as me. They have set up AdSense accounts, but don’t have enough money in their account to “cash out.” The minimum amount that you can receive in a payment check from Google is $100.

So let’s do a little math here:

10,000 lame blogs, like mine * $47.28 = $472,800 dollars that Google doesn’t have to pay out. So in essense Google is getting all sorts of free money off of AdSense. Brilliant.

I know it is unusual to make a test post in the middle of a blog, but I am doing it anyway.

I like Star Trek. Yes, you can chalk that one up on the long list of things that make me a geek, but I don’t care. I’m more of a Next Generation fan myself, although I like the original movies better than the Next Generation movies. As such, I’m somewhat interested in the new Star Trek that is due out next year. I thought it would be fun to get in on the Star Trekness or it all so I went out and bought myself a new domain name: StarTrekRumors.com. I myself was surprised that this domain name hadn’t been gobbled up already as most domain names with any meaning have been taken. I’m not sure what I’m going to use it for yet. I’m hoping that I can get a group of Star Trek fanatics to join my quest to find rumors and content about Star Trek and post it. We’ll see what happens.

Finally, you can buy 8gb iPhones on eBay for less than $399. I knew it would happen eventually, and it looks like the 16gb iPhone is probably what did it. I really don’t know why I am so excited about this, because I am not in the market for an iPhone at all. Thanks to my recent budget, I do have the money for an iPhone, but also thanks to my recent budget I can’t justify it.

Today I received an email forward from someone I knew in Ogden, or possibly by a scam artist using his name. The email told of a poll that NBC did this morning asking whether “One nation under God” or “In God We Trust” or other such references to God should be taken out of our national culture. According to the email, the result was 86% against removing these references.

I love receiving emails like this, because whether they warn of impending danger to my person or my computer, or appeal to my sense of right and wrong, they are completely fake. I absolutely love looking up the real story on these emails on Snopes.com. In this case the email was loosely based on a poll that CNBC did in 2005.

I am happy to know that the people I know want to make sure that I am not killed in a gang initiation, or infected when reaching for the gas pump, or missing out on sharing in Bill Gates fortune. However, I do find the thought of creating a hoax email very intriguing. I would love to get back an email that I sent around warning that mosquitoes that are black in color carry the dangerous goblutes (pronounced Go - bloots, e.g. bloots is your favorite sports team and you are cheering them on) virus, or that every time my email is forwarded Procter & Gamble donate five cents to the homeless.

So keep your eyes open for those emails that seem a little too good/crazy/emotional to be true, hopefully one of them will be mine.

I have officially decided that Thursday is the worst day of the week. By Thursday the resolve I had when the week began is nearly gone, and the dull hopelessness that comes when you feel like everyday of your life will be the same from here on out starts to creep in.

Or, as Aurthur Dent said, “I could never get the hang of Thursdays”

I don’t know if it was something I ate, but I have been feeling a little under the weather lately. I have the world’s most awesome immune system (in my opinion) though, and I am able to deal with it. My body doesn’t really get sick, I just get more of the feeling that I ate too much candy, or only had 5 hours of sleep.

Don’t get me wrong, 5 hours of sleep or too much candy can be brutal, but they don’t take you out of commission. I always think it would be nice to take a sick day, but if I take one I want to actually be sick, so I can watch 7 movies instead of go to work.

On a completely unrelated subject, I still haven’t come up with a slogan I like for Salt Lake Pearl Co. I need to wrack my brain, but I don’t have a good brain-wracking location. Oh well, I am sure I will come up with something anyway.

It seems that I like to cook. I had some people over to my house yesterday, as I had the day off. I made chicken curry, and rolls for the occasion. My basic rules for feeding people are that there should always be enough food that everyone gets as much as they want, and that the food should be good enough that they want as much as they can have.

I think the total food preparation time was probably three hours, but it didn’t seem long at all. I really have a good time cooking whenever I do it.

So I pose the question, is cooking work. For me, I would say “no.” Unfortunately, I don’t have time to cook good meals very often.