Websites I Use Every Day

My brother Patrick suggested that I do a post like this when we were on vacation together about a month ago but I forgot to do it until now. Below are a list of websites I visit every day or frequently enough that I find them of equal value as the ones that I hit each time I sit down at the computer.

Digg.com – I browse digg every day for news, humor and news that doesn’t hit my television. I also get a healthy dose of geek culture. If you have never visited this site, I highly recommend you check it out. Users submit stories that are ranked and promoted to the front page of the site by “diggs,” which are basically a digital thumbs up for the article. Using the power of a huge network of social users, only the best stuff tends to float to the top. That’s not always the case, but its true often enough that I get a lot of quality content every day by checking digg first.

Facebook.com – I tried MySpace but never really got into it. The page layouts full of animated gifs, songs, picture galleries and other nonsense are just too annoying for me. Facebook is a much simpler format and I can control what comes at me through my personal feed. I’ve found a lot of old friends there and I even like some of the little game applications.

Wikipedia.org – The bane of teachers all over the globe, I happen to be a huge fan of wikipedia. It’s the power of social knowledge that makes information free to everyone. Studies have shown that wikipedia is every bit as accurate as traditional encyclopedias and are able to contain far, far more information. Don’t believe me? Try looking up an obscure comic book character like Thunderstrike in your Encyclopedia Britannica.

Google.com – I use Gmail as my email provider, link up with other writers using google docs and search for information using the main google webpage. Google is also one of the most innovative and socially conscientious companies on the planet, giving me good reason to support them on many levels.

Penny-Arcade.com – the beating heart of the gaming world online, Penny-Arcade has a hilarious comic, an insightful blog and hosts the best consumer gaming convention in the country. They only update on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but I never miss a day.

Infendo.com / Gonintendo.com – for my Nintendo news and information

Smashboards.com – Super Smash Bros is my favorite gaming series and it helped me launch my career in the gaming industry. I am still active with this massive forum of fans and tournament players and I visit just about every day.

Comicbookresources.com – I have always been a closet comic geek and this is the best site on the net for comic-related news and information. One of the goals I have set for my life is to write a comic book and have it published. I hope that when that happens, what I write is worthy of a mention or two on their site.

ihasahotdog.com – because I like dogs and I don’t like cats. I don’t really check this every day, but its good for a laugh when things are slow at work.

I use a ton of other sites as well, but none of them as regularly as the list above. I have truly become an information junky over the last few years, being constantly connected to the web and these sites satisfy my cravings.

Writing is Hard

It took me a long time to realize that I am (at least on some level) a perfectionist. If I can’t do it right, I don’t usually want to do it.  If I get started with something new, I don’t want to do it the easy or beginner’s way. I want to do it like a pro. I read up on the subject at hand, review my circumstances and abilities and pursue help from people I feel are experts. This has caused me to fail spectacularly in certain areas of my life and to succeed in unprecedented fashion in others. However, I am still far from anal about these things. I am not terribly organized. I just have incredibly high expectations for myself and hate being mediocre at anything I want to do. It’s a personality quirk that I am learning to deal with and maximize to create success.

Over the last few years of my life, I have made a living as a communicator. I did writing, broadcasting and now I create visions for product development and communicate that through documentation and meetings with the people that are responsible for doing the work. My obsession with excellence in the area of communication has served me well. I take care of my wife, own a house and I get to do a job other people only dream about. This is an area in which this personality quirk has been beneficial.

Unfortunately, this personality quirk also cripples me in certain areas of my life as well. This blog is an excellent example. I don’t have time to write the perfect essay about how I feel about life, faith, games, friendships and all the other topics on my mind. I could just write my thoughts down and hit the publish button, but then I probably wouldn’t get the same intellectual and emotional response from my audience that I expect from the things that I write. So I’ve got about four unfinished blog entries that are just waiting for me to find the time and inspiration to finally complete them.

Casey and I will be taking a few days off next week to go to Nags Head with my family. My goal is to finish at least one of those blog entries and get them posted and then try to be a little less obsessed with the process of writing for my blog. I have plenty of design documents and meetings to obsess over. I’d like for this blog to be a stress reliever and not another point of stress that needs to be carefully massaged. In fact, I think I’ll get started by saving myself a little time and NOT proof-reading this entry. It’s a baby step, but it’s progress.

Jason’s rice?

No. jasonsrice does not stand for “Jason’s rice” as if I happen to have some special rice that I claim to be all my own. It’s Jason S. Rice. My middle name is Samuel and since Jason was one of the top 5 baby names the year I was born, there are surprisingly a lot of other Jason Rice’s on the planet that end up stealing just plain old “jasonrice” as a username. So I use the middle initial to differentiate myself from all the others and maintain a unique username. Although, I’m sure there’s a Jason Stephen Rice out there someplace that is really disappointed…