JonathanRyan.org

Both for the same post too!

My pop-up book post has been getting ridiculous numbers of hits from StumbleUpon.  I’ve noticed that they seem to leave more comments and browse more of my site than the average visitor.  They’ve also earned me enough Amazon commission to cover my domain name and a few months of hosting!  Thank you StumbleUpon users!

It has a terrible name, but this game kept me busy for far longer than it should.  My best run I had almost 40 tails.

Thanks to BubbleBox.com for the game!

Tonight Hal suggested I make a Pandora station of nothing but artists with foods in their names.  Here is the result: Food Radio

The bands:

A Taste Of Honey
An Emotional Fish
Artichoke
Black Grape
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Blue Oyster Cult
Bowling For Soup
Bread
Cake
Casper & The Cookies
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies
Chuck Berry
Cookie Galore
Cream
Electric Prunes
Fiona Apple
Goldie & the Gingerbreads
Green Jelly
Hall & Oates
Headless Chickens
Hot Tuna
Humble Pie
Jello
Jimmie’s Chicken Shack
Lamb
Lambchop
Lemon Jelly
Lemonheads
Marc Almond
Meat Loaf
Mint Royale
Moby Grape
My Friend The Chocolate Cake
Orange Juice
Papas Fritas
Peach
Peaches
Peaches & Herb
Potato Eaters
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Red Meat
Skankin’ Pickle
Smashing Pumpkins
Strawberry Alarm Clock
String Cheese Incident
The Apples In Stereo
The Appleseed Cast
The Chocolate Watchband
The Cranberries
The Flying Burrito Brothers
The Gourds
The Jam
The Lemon Drops
The Lemon Pipers
The Mighty Lemon Drops
The Notorious Cherry Bombs
The Pietasters
The Salads
The Soup Dragons
The Sugarcubes
Ultimate Spinach
Vanilla Fudge
Vanilla Ice
Virgin Prunes
Whole Wheat Bread

A few months ago, I signed up for Prosper. It is a peer-to-peer lending service that offers completive rates for borrowers, and good income for lenders. The “How it works” page of their site explains it pretty well:

Lisa Barron needs a small loan. So she posts a listing for a loan with the amount she needs at a rate she can afford.

Joe Davis has a little bit of money to lend. Joe, along with other lenders, bids down Lisa’s rate by bidding the amount he’s willing to lend at a rate he thinks is fair.

When the listing ends, the bids with the lowest rates are combined into a single 3-year loan for Lisa. Each month, Lisa’s payment is deducted from her bank account and deposited into her lender’s accounts until the loan is repayed.

So far, I’m really impressed with the service. I’ve invested $500 over 10 loans, and am getting back about $18 a month. If everything goes well, the loans will pay out at about $650. Even if 2 of the loans default with no payments (well over the historical default rate for the credit range I’m lending to), I’ll make a profit.

Not only is it a great source of passive income, but it is addicting. I find myself checking every few days to see who has made payments, what my ROI is (it is still unstable, since I’ve only got a few months of data), and how long it will be till I can reinvest the interest.

The only real complaint I have is that money invested in Prosper is locked in loans, you can’t just cash out. The best you could do is get a loan and use the payments from Prosper to pay it off. If you’re lucky, the Prosper community will fund it!

And now, since I’ve just ranted about how great I think it is, here is the link for you to sign up:

Overall, you scored as follows:

0% scored higher (more computer geeky),
0% scored the same, and
100% scored lower (less geeky).

Apparently I am the geekiest person ever to take this quiz.

John Walkenbach is considering making a mug with his top commenters listed on it.

I’m already acknowledged in his Excel 2007 Bible. :)

Go leave some messages for my friend.  He only has 2,000, which is a bit short of his goal.

Link

The Western Herald ran a story about the parking lot complaints that Dustin and I have been organizing. The article did a great job of expressing how many students are in support of our efforts and the final plans for our effort, something that other local media hasn’t really covered.

When we went to add a link to the article to the press section of the greenspace website, we discovered that the online edition of the Herald omitted the article, even though the rest of the front page articles were there. The negative editorial about the lot was featured, and listed as the most popular article.

I called up the office and spoke to someone who said they would talk to the proper people about the omission. I also left a quick email for the web editor. Today the article is still not up, so I find it hard to believe that this is a simple mistake on their part.

If the Herald is allowing WMU to control them by not letting them post articles critical of the administration (which would show up on the page all students use to access online resources from WMU), then they obviously do not show the journalistic integrity that should be taught to all of the Journalism majors at our university.

UPDATE: The Herald is going to be putting it up online.  They claim it was an honest mistake.

Dinosaur Comics reminded me of an awesome story that everyone should read.

Read the story online here.  I’m pretty sure I have a book by Asimov where he says this is one of his favourites, but I could be making that up.