NaNoWriMo - Wish me luck

Okay, it's official, I have signed up to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). In signing up for this, I have decided to write a 50,000 word (~175 page) novel by the end of November. This means that I will have to write an average 1,667 words per day.
I think the most difficult thing will be trying to leave all of the editing till I have written everything.
During the month I will try and give updates - but please feel free to send me an email to ask how things are going.

Here is the link to the site:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
Here is the link to my profile (word count):
http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/240190

Personal Tests Results - October 2007

Here are the results of my October 2007 personal tests:
03 - 09: 47.6% average
10 - 16: 40.6% average
17 - 23: 50.14% average

Microsoft wants your health information

Microsoft recently launched a new beta, called Health Vault. It is a place to conveniently store your health records. Now I'm not sure about you, but I don't think that I will be trusting MS with my medical information. What are your thoughts?

Personal Tests

I just had an "Oh duh!" moment. I was going to create a web page for this, then I remembered that I have a blog. I must be tired.

I recently ran into an interesting idea. It is called Personal unit tests. Follow the link for more info. I'm not sure why, but I loved the idea, and decided to shamelessly copy it for my own ends. I was keeping a daily todo list, but never provided the feedback about how I was really doing over a length of time. Following this I can make a spreadsheet and track how I'm doing over a length of time. Plus with the todo list I would be tempted to fudge things so that they would match what I wanted, rather than what I truly did; with this it is either pass-fail, yes-no. And this seems that much more geeky ^_^.
I decide that I would attempt to post the results of this daily to my Jaiku account (it's just easier). Yesterday I did a measly 39%.

Here are the tests:

01 Brush Teeth (Health)
If I brushed my teeth twice yesterday
02 Deodorant (Health)
If I put on deodorant yesterday
03 Lies (Mind)
If I told five or fewer lies yesterday
04 Meditate (Mind)
If I meditated twice during the day
05 Shower (Health)
If I showered in the morning
06 Sleep (Health)
If I got a full eight hours of sleep the night before
07 Stretch (Health)
If I stretched twice the day before
08 Check Feeds (Computer)
If I checked my feeds the day before
09 Check all notes (Other)
If I checked all my notes the day before
10 Check eMail (Computer)
If I checked my eMail the day before
11 Clean (Home)
If I worked on cleaning the house the day before
12 Journal (Mind)
If I wrote on my journal the day before
13 Budget (Home)
If we stayed on budget the month before
14 Family (Family)
If *I* contacted family members anytime the previous week
15 Trash (Home)
If I took out trash on Monday
16 Blog (Mind)
If I posted to my blog in the last seven days
17 Track weight (Health)
If I tracked my weight on Monday
18 Replace razor (Health)
If I replaced replaced my razor head on Thursday

Hotel key cards and internet information

This morning I ran into a guest who insisted that she needed to keep her key card (I work in a hotel), due to the *fact* that we have her name, address, and credit card number on there. Apparently she read a rather long article about it, of all places, on the internet. I would like to make a couple points here:

1. Hotels do not encode personal information onto key cards, doing so would be just plain foolish.
1. It is a major liability issue for the hotel, and the lock manufacturers.
2. Hotels have no reason to encode that information.
3. In about half the hotels that use key cards the encoder is not even attached to the computer.
2. People are not using common sense when they receive information from the internet. The internet makes in extremely easy for people to give information, and to receive information; this does not make every bit of information on the internet true, in fact in makes the information on the internet less reliable than information that you would receive in person.
1. Repeating false information, that you received on the internet, in real life only makes you seem more foolish than the original article.
2. When you receive information from the internet that claims to be absolutely true, do some research. You will be surprised at just how often the information is false.
3. If you receive an email, that contains false information, from someone be sure to send back an email explaining what was inaccurate.